


And we'll be slow, honey lovers ('til the clocks go forward again)

by stellam_ignem



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Blood, Brock is an asshole, Canada, Hurt/Comfort, Ice Skating, Love, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sex, bucky is conflicted™, steve is a former marine, the boxing and english teacher au literally no one asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 10:24:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 36,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10092179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellam_ignem/pseuds/stellam_ignem
Summary: But he knows he wants to stay, because he can’t stand not hearing Steve’s voice, or not seeing that smile on that face, or that solemn look of kindness whenever he hands over a few dollars to the homeless veteran on the side of the street. He can’t stand not making Steve laugh. He loves the the subtle smirk in his dares and the snark in his jokes, and the jerk in his brow when he’s lost in thought, or the way he smiles whenever they kiss and thumbs across Bucky’s lower back. Bucky chokes a little, on air, and gently wraps his arms back around Steve’s neck to kiss him.or: bucky's a boxer/writer and steve's the english teacher who walks in on his life.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this work would not have been possible without my loves E, K, and S. thank you so much for putting up with this and seriously guiding my work. It is also gifted to [my inspiration; you can find her here](http://nialljames.tumblr.com)
> 
> some warnings: there are fight sequences here that do involve blood; panic attacks; PTSD; flashbacks to a abusive relationship/non-consensual drug abuse. please please please let me know if there are any I may have missed.
> 
> y'all can also come follow [my sorry ass](http://baklavugh.tumblr.com) on tumblr, if ya want
> 
> title is taken from James Bay's "Clocks Go Forward". enjoy.

“Bucky! Fuckin’ concentrate! You think you’re gonna win this by dancin’ around like a fuckin’ butterfly?!”

“No sir.”

“Then quit messin’ around and keep your damn hands up!”

A squeaky piece of crap that’s barely registered as a mouth guard jams itself into Bucky’s mouth and a hand slaps his shoulder. It slips, losing its sting. Bucky spits out a mess of blood, baring his now-neon teeth as he stands and slams his gloved knuckles together. His body ripples with short, static bursts of flame and heaving breaths. It gleams with sweat and groans with bruises and pain. Everything burns; his face feels like it’s been shoved one too many times into summertime asphalt, his cheeks scarlet red with heat and over-exertion. His lip feels busted.

_It’s just a practice round, pal. Nothin’ you ain’t used to._

The score’s too close and Bucky wants to end this now before he collapses in on himself and makes himself more of an embarrassment. The ref stands between him and his partner, a sly-footed man only a few centimeters shy of reaching Bucky’s nose. The ref’s hand is outstretched between the two of them, facing Bucky, who barely catches the screech of the whistle before his jaw is jerked to the side. He bites down on his tongue to absorb the shock. He looks up and dodges out from beneath the next hook before his knuckles make contact with a kidney. There’s a sharp grunt, not his. He swings himself around, feet skidding against the floor, and throws a hook straight to the jaw. He lamely blocks the counter towards his chest and a new pain blossoms on his side. _Fuck_.

“C’mon, Barnes, you’re killin’ me here,”

“Then why don’t you come here and show me how it’s fuckin’ done, Coach?”

“It’s not what I’m paid for.”

The diversion earns him a hook to the mouth that knocks out his mouth guard and leaves him dazed. The bell rings and he staggers back onto the ropes, breath heavy and heart even more so as he prepares himself to add another loss to the scoreboard. He’s been at the bottom of the roster for a week.

He sulks to his corner and rubs off the sweat all over his face. A slap to the back pisses him off more than it should and he grits his teeth. He swipes his mouth guard off the ground, clumsily, putting it down on the chair.

“The fuck is wrong with you today?” Fury is pissed.

Bucky takes the clear water bottle his coach extends and squishes the water around in his mouth. He spits into the bucket next to him and takes a proper swig. “It’s nothin’, I’m just—”

“I don’t give a damn. Get over it and haul ass. The match ‘s in a goddamn month and you’re actin’ up a storm. Focus, kid, focus.” Coach pats his cheek, and this time the contact is more reassuring. Bucky’s fingers curl and uncurl inside his too-hot boxing gloves. He nods, takes a breath, and welcomes the mouth guard this time when it’s shoved back in. He stands and shuffles over to the center of the ring with his hands up and his hair dangling too close to his face.

The bell rings and he exhales.

He makes the first punch and evades the flurry of the others before slapping a left-handed hook against the cushioning of the head guard. His partner staggers back. Bucky advances. There’s a punch to the face, dodged but landed on the upper arm, two uppercuts for the kidneys, a hook to the face again; he groans when a punch catches him square in the face but he ducks, surges, and finishes the match with an uppercut to the chin that comes with an earsplitting CLACK. The countdown begins as Bucky pulls off his gloves and steps out of the ring and ends when he throws his towel over his shoulders. “You put up a fight, pal.” He calls. His partner gives him a thumbs up from the floor and it makes the corners of Bucky’s mouth pull up a bit.

“That’s more like you to bust my ass, Barnes. Good to have you back.”

“Better,” Coach approaches him as they make the slow walk over cushiony blue styrofoam to the locker room. “But honestly kid, what’s going on?”

“Nothin’ Coach, c’mon. Don’t worry about it,”

“I will worry when it comes to my best fighter,”

“Coach listen, I’m fine, just tired today,”

“You’re talkin’ to me like I’m dumb,”

“That ain’t far off mark,”

“Next to you I’m the lucky one.” Fury grins as he tucks his hands into the shiny red pockets of his 80’s track suit. It almost makes Bucky laugh, Coach’s nostalgia of a better time and a time well lived. “Take it easy tonight; we start bright and early tomorrow,”

“You got it. Night, Coach.”

Bucky’s shoes squeak across the pale wooden floor as he wipes his face with the soaked ends of his towel. He grimaces and dumps it in the hamper before reaching his locker to pull out a fresh towel and rag from his duffel bag. He wipes down the insides of his gloves after pulling out the greying lace and makes mental note to clean it later. He folds away the rag and gloves into his duffel bag, exchanging them for his shampoo and body wash and razor; his loofah swings by a string from the neck of the shampoo bottle. With clean clothes and shoes in hand, he strips behind the protection of a white shower curtain that’s crumpled at the corners. He swears as he lifts his arms, highly unappreciative of the pain that shoots up his back and ribs. Nothing’s broken, but he can see the birth of new bruises all over his sides and chest. He tastes blood in his mouth and realizes his nose is bleeding and fumbles to turn on the squeaky shower that honest to God needs a repair already. He wouldn’t be surprised to find out it’s older than Coach.

Warm water pools soft pink around his feet as he scrubs his face and body clean of the hours of grime and sweat and pain. He shaves quickly, already having memorized where his face is depressed and where it rises and where it’s a little too sensitive or rough. He cuts himself anyways. He shuts off the water and it gets stuck halfway, leaving him under freezing cold water for way too long as he struggles to completely shut it off.

 _Nice one, you fucking idiot_.

His teeth chatter as he reaches for the towel hanging outside against the tiled wall and he rushes to wipe every droplet from his now-pink skin. With the towel knotted at his waist, he hastily pushes his hair up into a bun and dresses half inside and half outside the shower. It takes an effort not to slip on his way back to his locker. He gives the towel a good whip in the air and jams it back into the duffel bag along with everything else. He pulls on a sweater and slips his phone into the front pocket; his earbuds and music follow and he’s out the door by 10:04PM.

The cool autumn breeze tickles his clean-shaven face and holds his hands before he places them with his phone in his pocket. The city lights and street lamps give the sidewalks and roads dusky colors of orange and yellow and white, lighting his way to the subway. A dog barks in the distance and he presses on the volume button before realizing nothing’s playing.

 _You honestly don’t notice shit, Barnes_.

He blindly puts his phone on shuffle as he scans his MetroCard across the panel and walks straight through the revolving bar. The subway’s bustling with teenagers and people who look like they’re going to pass out dead onto the floor; they’re all characters he sees himself in.

He boards and scrolls through his phone when he sits, checking his stats over and over again until his phone almost crashes. He’s not ready. He doesn’t _feel_ ready, no matter how much Logan tells him he is past all the swearing and shouting. He adjusts his duffel bag so it’s sitting next to him and zips an opened flap. He pulls his phone from his pocket, opens up Safari, pokes around his reading list, and rereads the saved article on him he discovered this morning. The title’s enough to keep him from going for it, but it’s click bait for a reason.

 

_“Bucky Barnes fell off the face of the earth after what happened in Chicago and I don’t expect him to make a full comeback; as a matter of fact, no one does. What happened then is going to take a toll on his performance now and forever; you don’t recover from something like that. You really don’t. With the mental pressure he’s up against from himself, from the WBA, his new coach, anyone who knows the guy, practically, knows this is going to know that this is going to be more than an uphill battle. It’s a ninety degree incline and we honestly don’t know if he’s going to make it to the semifinals or if he’ll even stick around that long. Compare him to anyone, absolutely anyone, and you know who you’re going to root for to save face.”_

**_Gordon Schumacher, RingTV_ **

 

 _Fuck you, Gordon_.

Bucky throws his phone back in his pocket and tries to let whatever the hell he’s listening to take him away for awhile

He looks out the windows, thankful the closest person is a good ten feet away as the others outside all fall into a blur. The train screeches and jolts and jerks at the turns, putting more pressure on Bucky’s already sore calves as he balances himself. He grits his teeth and begs for patience. At the next stop, the person in the car with him leaves and he’s about to rejoice solitude when someone walks in and sits across from him. _Of all the other twenty seats in the goddamn car you choose_ —

Bucky swallows when his eyes adjust. _Oh, no. No no no, he’s handsome_. His hair’s a mildly dirty blonde, swept to the side in a gentle wave as the rest is cut short. Blue eyes peek from behind marbled brown eyeglasses, the stereotypical, round, English teacher type. Round, sweet cheekbones give away the man’s addiction to laughter and a strong jaw to support it. His hands are strong but slender, veins shifting as he ruffles through the stack of packets he’s holding. He looks like he could knock Bucky out with one straight cross—and Bucky’d gladly let him—but he has a demeanor so calm and warm Bucky has to look away from the Living Contradiction. He has a pen cap in his mouth that bobs up and down like a cigarette as he writes away on the papers. A folder slips off his lap and he grabs it without looking, still reading, and Bucky forces himself to look away before he starts to drool. He resorts to gawking at his phone but not even poking around some more can save him.

He’s fucked. He’s really, really disastrously fucked. He shifts in his seat and pinches at a zipper on his duffel bag.

A piece of paper lands by his foot when the train jerks again. He picks it up after some delay and his eyes catch the title before he can stop himself.

**_Why Intersectional Feminism Matters to the Young People of the 21st Century_ **

It’s dated today, and it looks like one of those English term papers he’d write last minute in college. Only this one was over twenty pages long. He notices the Living Contradiction looking and rummaging around and takes his chance. “Sorry, you lookin’ for this?” He offers the paper and slips out his earphones. The stranger smiles and Bucky’s fucking blinded. “Thanks, sorry about that,” his pen falls from his mouth and Bucky swallows while trying to keep a mild expression. “‘S no problem. You teach English?”

“Yeah! Well, sort of, um… I’m a teacher’s assistant down at Brooklyn College for Modern Essaying and Literature.”

Bucky really should’ve really seen that one coming because anyone even remotely related to teaching English in college is breathtaking. He now knows firsthand. The stranger shifts and puts his papers away. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

He smiles again. “What do you do for a living?”

“Me? Nothin’ much, I mean…” he clears his throat and toys with a little keychain from the Bolshoi Theatre Natasha got him a few years ago. “I’ve got a degree in English Lit, but nothin’ too outstandin’ though.”

“Do you write?” The stranger looks excited and is enthusiastically looking at Bucky and Bucky is feeling all sorts of hot under the collar. “Yeah, I’m workin’ on somethin’ now, actually,” he smiles now and the stranger has a brighter one to match. “That’s amazing. You have to let me read it sometime, don’t care what genre,”

“It ain’t that interestin’ yet,”

“I feel like if it comes from you, it has to be.”

Bucky glances up. The stranger’s dropped his gaze in time and there’s a smile quirking at the corners of his mouth. Bucky’s got nothing to say because he doesn’t know what could top something like that and honestly he can’t stand making himself act more like an idiot. It makes his heart give out a little as he tries to make his brain process and his mouth function. He doesn’t remember the last time he’s been like this, in the middle of some flirt-fest because there’s. rust lining his cocky mouth and confident tongue. Clint would be pissing himself silly right now. Bucky shifts and the blond perks up. “Do you have a side job or is it just constant writing?”

Bucky chuckles. “Don’t know if you can call boxin’ a side job, but yeah,” the stranger looks so impressed Bucky looks down at his knuckles to stop himself from melting down towards the floor. Fuck. “That’s neat!” The stranger leans forward, forearms on thighs, and Bucky struggles not to think about his head between said thighs. He gives the stranger a look and distractedly pulls at the free ends of his hair. He now completely understands the sentiment of having nice hair and prays he’d just listened to his sisters more often when it came to shit like this. “Really? Is it?”

“Yeah, of course! Takes a lot to be one. Are you professional?”

The stranger doesn’t know him and Bucky intends to keep it that way. He’s blessed how little people know him outside the IBF and tries to savor that innocence. It saves face. “Sure, yeah. I’m Bucky, but the way,” He extends a hand and notices a smile curve up on the edge of the stranger’s mouth. “Bucky?”

“It’s from my middle name, Buchanan. Never really liked bein’ called James,”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Bucky. I’m Steve,”

“It’s a pleasure, Steve.”

Bucky’s never felt more fucked than this moment and that is saying a whole fucking lot considering his entire “side” career is dependent on knockouts. He feels his cheeks radiate with heat, much like they do when he boxes, only now it spreads across the bridge of his nose and towards his ears and down his neck. He lets go and pretends to be fixing something on his duffel bag to save himself from embarrassing whatever worth he has left in himself.

His stop’s called.

 _God fuckin’ bless_.

His hand doesn’t quite reach the bar to hoist himself up and his bag drags him down; suddenly the floor’s reaching for his face but something strong grips him by the forearm and keeps him steady. A pen falls to the floor instead. “You alright?” Steve asks, looking down worriedly at him, and Bucky has to focus on getting out rather than the hand clasped around his wrist. Steve follows. Bucky quirks an eyebrow as he straightens himself out and gently draws his hand away from Steve’s wrist. “Yeah, yeah I’m fine. I’m just tired, is all.” He explains as the train whips a piece of hair free from his face when it rushes by. The concrete looks awfully attractive to sink into right now. He crosses his arms. “Hey, don’t you have to be on that train outta here?” He motions uselessly to the passing train and Steve only shrugs. “I can catch the next one. You sure you’re alright?”

“No yeah, I’m fine. I just feel bad for gettin’ you off that train.”

“Don’t worry about it; here,” Steve’s ripped a piece of paper from a notepad and is scrawling something down against his knee. His hair falls and Bucky digs his thumb into his palm to stop himself from brushing the blond back in place. He hands over the paper and Bucky takes it between his fingers. “Call or text me when you get home,” Bucky can’t resist the urge to roll his eyes. “Whatever you say, _Mom_.”

Steve laughs and gives Bucky’s arm a soft punch. Bucky sucks his teeth and crosses his arms, his mouth unable to really restrain the smile that follows. “I wouldn’t try that on a professional boxer, Steve,”

“As if you’d punch back,”

“Try me,” he winks. There’s a rose blooming across Steve’s face and the next train pulls up. “Text me, okay?”

“I will. Thanks.”

Steve smiles, murmurs a soft “goodnight”, and reluctantly pulls himself through the door. He waves when the train heaves itself into motion, and just like that he’s gone. Bucky lets go of a breath he doesn’t know he’s been holding and dips his mouth into his palm.

He almost misses his train for the line change.

This car is devoid, empty, finally offering the silence and quiet he needs to recuperate from what had just happened. He touches his forearm right where Steve touched him and it burns. Here he is, a crumbling and barely stable lump of a person and there Steve is, a living beam of sunlight walking around with no strain or stress lines about him; he walks warmhearted and free, weightless and happy and Bucky knows, Bucky knows he hasn’t seen something like that in too long. He misses it.

When he gets off the subway and back on the surface, the night’s just as he’s left it: dimly lit and quiet, always quiet. There’s the occasional shriek out of a car full of college students, the drunken swearing out some alley, the slamming of windows and doors to keep out the cold. Bucky’s teeth start to chatter. He walks six blocks to his apartment and fumbles for his keys when he reaches the door. He unlocks it, passes through the second door with his white keycard, and makes his way up the creaky expanse of stairs to the fourth floor. Room 401, the only apartment room this high and of course he chose this one of all the others. His burning calves and thighs remind him of his idiocy with each step he takes.

He opens his door and lets himself into darkness and city lights peering in from the window. A meow echoes around his feet and he throws his duffel bag aside onto the couch. “Hey there, Zemo.” he reaches down and pulls up a black cat with shorn hair and yellow eyes and perches him on his chest, scrunching his fingers back and forth across warm pelt. He fumbles for the lights and Zemo whines to be let down and digs his claws into Bucky’s jacket, adding to the collection of scratches against the worn leather. “Good to see you too.” He mutters, placing the cat down on the floor and stepping over him to get his clothes to the washing machine.

The dryer hums in the background as he brushes his teeth and types in Steve’s number into his phone. His thumb hovers over the keyboard and he contemplates. It’s 11:21PM.

 

_Hey, it’s Bucky. I’m home._

 

He rinses out his mouth and climbs into bed. As he plugs in his phone charger a sharp chirp goes off.

 

 _Oh, hey! I was starting to think you forgot.  
_ _You sure you’re alright? No dizziness?_

 _I’m fine Doc, just dead-ass tired.  
_ _And thanks for helping me save face back there._

_It’s no problem!_  
_I know how that is.  
Listen I hate to be a bummer but I gotta go. School still starts early._

 

 _You’re fine. Goodnight.  
_ _Maybe I’ll let you read my rough draft sometime._

 

 _Please._  
_You have no idea how  exhausting it can be to read the same papers on one subject. I need a break._ _  
__Night_!

 

Bucky stares at the screen before he wills himself to go to sleep. He throws his phone onto his nightstand and turns, curling the blankets over his sore body and shaking out his shower-wet hair. Zemo gets comfortable and snores softly and Bucky wonders how easy it is for animals to live as if nothing is better than simplicity. Zemo yawns and curls on into himself. Bucky reaches and draws his hand behind Zemo’s ears, and it earns him an enthusiastic, rumbling purr.

He falls asleep with his hand slumped against Zemo’s backside and wakes up with his fingers wrapped between paws.

—

“He seems nice, Nat,”

“Over text?”

“I talked to him before I got his number, Jesus. Why’re you against this? Ain’t you the one tellin’ me to get some sorta social life?”

“Yes, I was. But if you really want a relationship with him—”

“I know, I know. I gotta talk to him in person and all that shit. And I want to, I really do. I just—I dunno, Nat,”

“Have you talked over the phone?”

“About what?”

“Anything,”

“Of course. I like hearin’ his voice,”

“Do you actually like him?”

Bucky snorts and takes a sip of his beer. He hopes the red rushing to his cheeks is just an aftershock of the cold outside. Natasha stares him down with wide eyes and begins playing with her miniature arrow necklace. “You do,”

He chokes on the beer. “I didn’t say anythin’!”

“But you do, don’t you?”

“Nat, c’mon,”

“James. Do you like him or not?”

“Don’t call me that,”

“Then answer the question,”

“Yeah, I mean— yeah, I do,”

“Then talk to him. Set up a date,”

“Where? Here?” The beer bottle makes a circle around his lowly lit living room.

Natasha rolls her eyes and flips her scarlet hair over her shoulder before turning towards the kitchen. She waves her hands and waits for Clint to look up from whatever it is he’s rummaging around for. He sees her and stops. “ _Something to open the beer_ , _please_?” She signs, and Clint nods. He almost breaks a drawer after hip checking it and Bucky tries not to bristle. That same drawer’s broken before and for the same reason and he seriously needs to start investing in sturdier material. Or get Clint to stop.

Clint tosses over a bottle opener and turns on his hearing aids. “What’d I miss?” He flops onto the couch next to Natasha and props his feet up onto the coffee table.

Bucky says “nothing” the second Natasha says “Steve”. Clint raises an eyebrow. “What about Steve?”

“Natasha, don’t,”

“Bucky likes him and I suggested he take him out,” Natasha opens her beer and puts the discarded cap into the empty salsa bowl. Clint laughs, messy. “Barnes? Asking Steve out? You’ve gotta be kidding me. Everything working up in that noggin of yours?”

“You’re one to fuckin’ talk, Barton,” Bucky nudges Clint’s feet to get them off the coffee table because it’s been broken before and by the very person who stumbles on it whenever he gets the chance. “Clint, get your goddamn feet off of—”

“Alright, alright, jeez. No need to be so hostile,” he looks to Natasha, brows raised. “And you want _that_ attitude to ask Steve out? Good luck, Nat,”

“Why’re you actin’ like I haven’t done it before?”

“Because you haven’t, not with a dude anyways,”

“It can’t be that different. And you know nothin’ about my love life,”

“Are you saying you’ve dated guys before?”

“What I’m sayin’ is—”

“Are you two done?” Natasha slips a lime slice down the bottle neck and licks her crimson fingernails clean of salt and lime juice. She crosses her legs and smiles in Bucky’s direction. “What I was saying is you shouldn’t ask him out to the apartment. That’s too much for a first date,”

“Man, you’re really starting to come off your dating rocker if you thought to ask him out here,” Clint rolls his shoulders back and Bucky wills himself not to throw a punch. Clint’s nose looks awfully red and—

Natasha smiles over her shoulder back at Clint, whose cocky grin vanishes as soon as Natasha gives him a once over. She stares and Clint shifts a few times before apologizing. Bucky tries to resist the smirk on his lips. “Ask him out to dinner. Somewhere you feel comfortable,” Natasha resumes. Bucky retreats back to his hopelessness and drains the last of his beer. “You know I haven’t made much of a public appearance since Chicago. I don’t wanna scare the guy off by some shit comin’ outta nowhere,”

“But you said he had no idea about you,”

“What’s gonna stop him from findin’ out if the cameras aren’t a dead giveaway?”

“He’s probably Googled you already,” Clint supplies.

“You’re not helpin’, Clint. I’m already a fuck up as is. I don’t want him to find out I’m a famous fuck up,”

“James, listen,” Natasha sighs and runs a hand through Bucky’s hair. He deflates at the motion and hunkers down in his spot, staring dejectedly at his beer bottle on the coffee table. “You have to relax, okay? It’s going to be fine. Don’t you think he would’ve done something by now if he was out to get you?”

Bucky considers her words and pulls his head from her hand. “Yeah.” He mutters. Natasha smiles. “Then ask to go on a date, you’ll be fine,”

“Alright,”

“Now,”

“Now? C’mon, you gotta be kiddin’ me, Nat,”

“I’m not, James. Do it now or you won’t do it later,”

“Gotta listen to the lady, Barnes.” Clint only briefly looks up from his phone to supply the conversation. Bucky bites his lip and looks for his phone, pushing Clint’s feet off the coffee table as he passes by. He pulls his phone from its charger and sits back down. His hands itch to type, to tell Steve about this awful mess because lately Steve’s been the only person he could talk to without being psychoanalyzed or advised. He just likes having someone normal to talk to, even with the excess emojis and too proper grammar.

His phone buzzes with a text on cue. It’s Steve. He’s sent a picture of a coffee mug with an English pun all over it; it’s a gift from one of the students he helps out. On one side of the mug it read, “What happened when past, present, and future all walked into a bar?”

The other side replied, “It was tense.”

Steve’s splurging on emojis do not fail to let Bucky know about how much he loves it and how much it makes him laugh. The corners of Bucky’s lips quirk up into an involuntary smile and he immediately texts back a little something of his own. Natasha clears her throat and Bucky’s fingers tense up all over again. She doesn’t let up, and Bucky gives in to sending a hasty text that Natasha sighs at but gives him credit for. “We have to head out soon. Tell me how it goes, okay?” She smacks a kiss to Bucky’s cheek and stands with Clint right on her heel. He gives Bucky a look. “Don’t expect me to kiss you, too.”

“As if I’d want you to.”

They leave Bucky alone and still Steve hasn’t said anything about the date. Zemo mewls and patters around Bucky’s feet for food, and Bucky leaves his phone abandoned on the coffee table to shut up the cat. His skin prickles in anticipation and he snaps back towards his phone at every few paces to see if he’s missed the _ding_ or if the vibrations have been lost to the couch cushions. Nothing. He feels something cold drag across his skin as his teeth grit together. He really needs to stand up to Natasha a bit more often, but that road’s not traveled for a reason.

When the phone refuses to come back to life, Bucky retreats to his bedroom. He goes to his desk and pulls out a notebook from the pile of papers and sketches and sheets that are haphazardly strewn across the wooden plane. He grabs a pen that’s about to fall off the wooden table and sits back down on the couch. His iPod’s playing softly in the background through the speakers as his pen skirts over notebook paper, adding and taking and pushing so deep into the paper the ink almost bleeds through. He checks the time (10:57PM) and tries to ignore that throbbing emptiness between his rib cage. He doesn’t know what he was supposed to expect.

 

When he checks his phone again it’s already 2:02AM. He’s written ten pages of material, and that’s not counting the side drafts he made when he was trying to get himself back into focus. What stops his splurge is exhaustion and the soft _ding_ he’d been waiting for. Steve’s responded, and Bucky just about drops everything to open his phone and check the text.

 

_I never thought you’d ask._

 

There’s a heart next to it and Bucky responds in kind. They’ll finalize in the morning, when Bucky can think and not when his brain’s so full of material he’s going to slip and say something wrong. His thumbs hover over the screen like they did the first time. His brain’s telling him no. He abandons his phone and leaves the couch to go collapse onto the bed, where Zemo’s conveniently spread across an entire half fast asleep. Bucky strips down to his boxers and crawls in, fast asleep before his head hits the pillow and he cuddles against empty blankets and cold.

When he wakes up, Zemo’s pressed against his knees to keep him warm. He reaches across with his hand and rubs at the top of Zemo’s head. Zemo turns into the touch with a purr and buries his paws up against his nose. Bucky lets out a low chuckle and shifts around for his phone. When the end of his charger comes up empty, the wrinkle in his brow creases and he staggers out of bed. His phone’s ringing, loud and unbearably irritating and it takes him too long to fish it out from beneath the couch cushions. The caller ID’s too blurry to make out. “Hello?” He rasps.

“Did you fucking sleep in?”

_Shit, what time was it?_

“Coach?”

“No, it’s your goddamn conscience; who the fuck else would this be?”

 _Shitshitshitshit_ —

“Listen, I’ll be there in fifteen minutes, tops,”

“Don’t fucking bother. Press’re lined up ‘round the block to come talk to you,”

“Why?”

“You didn’t see the schedule?”

“No,”

“It came out this morning. Didn’t you see who’s gonna make it to Chicago again?”

“Coach, listen, you’re really throwin’ me in for a loop here—”

“Brock’s going. Him and Pierce.”

Bucky drops his phone and it slams so loudly against the wood floor he flinches. “Barnes? Hey, Barnes, you there? Barnes,” Bucky’s hands are shaking as he picks up the phone and puts it back up to his ear, avoiding the newfound cracks along its screen. He leans on the wall and takes a deep breath. “Yeah, I’m here.” He looks outside and can almost feel the wind chill as it whips the tree branches and sends up a flurry of dead leaves. The sky trembles with streaks of scarlet and coral and brown. Bucky feels the trembling all over.

“Listen, kid. You’re technically not qualified yet. You don’t have to do this; we can pull out whenever you want.”

Bucky finds himself making coffee with his cell phone next to the sink as he fills the tiny water tank. The phone is on speaker. “Are you listening?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry. I— I don’t know,”

“Kid—”

“I need some time.”

Fury sighs on the other end; Bucky hears shuffling and rustling and the slam of a metal cabinet. He dumps two tablespoons of coffee into the filter and closes the lid and turns on the machine. “Your qualifying fight’s tomorrow. You can lose and drop out, or win and back out. It’s your choice.”

“Lemme call you back.”

Bucky hangs up before Fury has time to protest. He digs the nail bed of his thumb under his front teeth. His mind feels like it’s running too fast for his heart to catch up. His throat and cheeks feel hot with the blood that’s rushing to his skin, and it’s not helping the contemplation he’s trying to get through. He hasn’t felt so torn over something like this and parts of him ache to have dropped out of it sooner because there’s no stopping what’s gonna come and all he can do is stand and fight or cower and lose all dignity all over again.

It’s not the fight. It’s seeing Brock and Pierce. His left arm aches and creaks when he bends it to pour himself a cup of coffee. Cream and sugar follow and he’s suddenly stuck in a Chicago hotel room with Brock holding him down, left arm up, and Pierce standing some feet away.

 

_“Don’t do this. Please. Please, Pierce, I’m beggin’ you.”_

_“It’s for your own good, you know that.”_

 

His hand quakes fast enough to have coffee spill over the sides of the mug and land scalding hot against the back of his hand. He swears and cleans up before his phone goes off again. It’s Steve, asking what they want to do and when they want to meet for the date. He suggests tonight and Bucky can’t think of anything better than to get his mind off his forthcoming disaster. He responds with “yes” and waits. A response comes seconds later.

 

_I know this great place called Rye on South and 1st. Low key. Fun. How does 7 sound? We’ll meet there._

 

His fight’s the same time tomorrow night. He thinks it’s just more and more of a growing coincidence, the way he and Steve just somehow seem to work in ways Bucky can’t put his finger on. And maybe Bucky’s starting to go a little crazy over the continuous ricochet of his heart every time he thinks of Steve and that goddamned smile. He thinks of Steve and the memory of Brock and Pierces edge themselves back into the corner of his mind.

 

_Yeah, I’d love to. I’ll see you at seven. Don’t be late._

 

It’s dangerous to be so reliant on someone like this. Bucky knows, but he doesn’t think he has the discipline enough to back down.

He wonders if he should bring flowers.

He drinks from his coffee, now cooler and mild, and Zemo mewls from down below for food. “Hey, you,” Bucky picks him up and scratches behind his ears. Zemo squirms and pushes against Bucky’s chest with Russian blue paws until he can get himself loose enough to fall back down. Bucky sighs and puts Zemo back on the floor.

As he opens the can of Meow Mix and dumps half into a bowl, placing it down on the floor next to Zemo’s water, his phone starts to ring again. He checks the caller ID this time. It’s Natasha, “Morning. I heard you got today off.”

“Word travels fast, don’t it?”

“Being friends with your coach has its perks. But you’re worried about tomorrow,”

“No shit.”

Bucky moves to the couch and tucks one leg under his body before the other one presses against his chest. He takes a sip of coffee and brushes his hair away from his face. “I can’t drop out. I gotta do this,”

“You don’t have to prove yourself to anyone, James,”

“I do, I have to,”

“Steve?”

“What? No. Well maybe, if our date for tonight’s still on,”

“He said yes?”

“Yeah. He did,”

“Honey that’s wonderful! Where are you going?”

“He said some place named Rye. It’s supposed to be low key and fun and the perfect place for the two of us,”

“Is that what he said?”

“More or less. Dunno if I’m more nervous about tonight than tomorrow, though. You know I haven’t been goin’ around since…”

“Yeah. I know. Don’t think about that right now, because you’re gonna be fine with him. He wants something with you,”

“And if I fuck up?”

“It’s going to be his choice after that.”

He takes another sip of coffee and watches as the sun trickles down on concrete and brick. It peeks out of clouds of grey, soft and ominous, calm as they sigh across the autumn sky. They hush the sun and bring her out as they please, illuminating the living room with bursts of gold and quieting in sighs of darkness.

Zemo circles over a corner of the Persian carpet. He paws over sapphire paisley dabbed in emerald and salmon, doused in beige before sitting with his back to the sunlight. He looks up at Bucky and blinks, lethargic and content.

“Are flowers too much for a first date?”

“Yes. You know, Clint was right about one thing,”

“Since when is he right?”

“When he says you’re off your dating rocker. Because you are.”

 

—

 

He loses his hair gel around 6:31 PM. His cuff links are missing from where he usually puts them—their case on his dresser—and he can’t find his black suit jacket with the fawny interior. The motorcycle ride’s going to take twenty minutes minimum with rush hour traffic. Zemo yawns from on Bucky’s bed and sighs. Bucky glares at him until he realizes this isn’t how he should be using up his time.

He puts Argan oil on his hair instead and ties it at the back of his head, strands falling loose around his jaw and nape. He slaps on aftershave and cologne and forgoes the suit jacket for an actual coat. He finds his cuff links in one of the coat pockets, hastily puts them on, and wraps the black woolen scarf his mother gave him around his neck. He pockets his keys and wallet, ties his shoes on, makes sure everything is off, and locks the door behind him as he leaves. His watch says it’s 6:49. He clambers down the stairs outside to his motorcycle and briefly wonders if the neighbors have anything yet to say about his noisiness. Hands fit over the handlebars once the jack’s kicked up and the engine rumbles to life.

He ends up calling Steve at a stoplight because the guilt’s a little too much to keep contained in his throat. A voice that sounds a little too close to heaven answers. “Hey. You’re not ditching on me, are you?”

“No no, of course I’m not. I’m just gonna be late, sorry. Traffic is just…”

“It’s fine. I’ll wait. Now get off the phone and drive safe; it’s supposed to snow soon and I’d rather see you in one piece.”

“I signed up for a date, not a drivin’ safety lecture,”

“Whatever, jerk. There won’t be a date if you’re not here.”

“Got me there. I’ll see you.”

He retires his phone into his pocket, scrambling and swearing as the light turns green and hands slam on car horns.

His teeth rattle in his mouth and the skin on his hands run rivers of white; the wind whips across his eyes and face and the second he sees the illuminated sign of Rye he skids into a parking spot across from the entrance and turns off his bike. Boots clash with cold concrete and make a beeline for the single door. He thinks his hair’s frozen down by now; it clings uncomfortably to his skin and doesn’t give as easily as he hopes when he pushes stray strands behind his ear.

A blast of warm air waters down all ice left from the outside when he lets himself in. It’s dark, dimly lit; mahogany and blackened oak line the bar and roof alike. A wide, golden, glittering chandelier hovers just below the roof tiles and sparks a light in every glass and candle and piece of silverware that’s on the tables. It’s rambunctious, bustling with rumbles of conversation interrupted by bouts of laughter and cheers. Shot glasses slam down on the bar table and beers slide across soaked wood and suddenly Bucky finds his muscles falling to a familiar easiness.

The hostess greets him nonchalant and composed. “Welcome.”

“Hey, I should be under a reservation, uh, Rogers?”

“For two, correct?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright. Right this way, please.”

Bucky follows the brisk pace and steady swish of microbraids, some highlighted a flaxen shade that stand out in the darkness of the room. Bucky pulls off his scarf and jams it into his pocket. The hostess halts and turns on her heel, placing Bucky’s menu with a careful elegance on the table. “Someone will be right with you, enjoy.”

She leaves and Bucky’s eyes already fall down to Steve’s. His face is illuminated by the candles on the table, soft highlights and coarse shadows dance across defined jaw and sweetened eyes. He stands and presses a kiss to Bucky’s cheek that gets him reeling from the warmth. “It’s good to see you,” Steve’s drawling, his voice loud enough despite the clanging ambience around them.

“Yeah, you too. If that’s the way you’re gonna greet me from now on, we gotta schedule the next date now.”

Steve laughs and goddamn, Bucky already knows he’s going to have to fight to survive tonight.

Bucky learns Steve was born and raised in Brooklyn, is an only child, ironically can’t spell, and lost his father in the Gulf Wars. Despite that, he’s done two years in Afghanistan before receiving an honorable discharge. When he came back, he decided to get a teaching degree. Bucky learns it’s easy to make Steve laugh but there’s a sadness sitting on his chest that he can’t pinpoint yet. He learns Steve loves the summer most, and not because his birthday is on the 4th of July.

Bucky’s sore cheeks make him realize he hasn’t laughed enough as of late, and they talk well after their plates have been cleared and the check’s been paid.

It’s snowing when they go outside. Bucky blinks up to white flurries that glide and sigh onto the pavement as they sprinkle down from the grey sky. “I parked down there, do you wanna walk down with me?” Steve murmurs, and Bucky turns to see the snowflakes lining blond eyelashes and melting on cherry red lips.

“Yeah, ‘course.”

Steve smiles and leads the way before Bucky catches up and their shoulders bump. His hand, ungloved, takes Steve’s, gloved, who turns his hand straight inward for their fingers to interlock. Bucky bites down on his lip to stop the tightening in his chest and incessant jerking of the corners of his lips. He turns and sees Steve looking at him and the smile’s let loose. “What?”

“Nothing. I just can’t believe I wasted a perfectly good night on this.”

Bucky scoffs. “I bet those papers you hadta grade would’ve been a real pleasure ‘round.”

Steve shakes his head, grin brighter than the snow around lamplights and Bucky feels small in seconds.

“I had a great time, I really did. It’s good to know there’s something behind all that boxer attitude,”

“Hey now. You were on a roll,”

“I know. But really—I had a good time with you,”

“A good enough time t’see me again?”

“Hell yes.”

They stop and Bucky swings around when Steve raises his arm and brings him in closer. Bucky’s hands rest on Steve’s chest, curled inward; snow falls in the space between their faces, and each of their exhales grace up into the grey sky. Bucky’s shivering and Steve sidles in closer, warmth almost melting off the snow that rests on their arms and shoulders. “You cold?” Steve asks.

“Ain’t that bad,”

“I could drive you where you parked,”

“In that?” Bucky jerks his head towards the muted blue of a Volkswagen buggy and Steve presses down on Bucky’s narrow hips. “Hey,”

“What?”

“Just because you got a Harley don’t mean you can talk big,”

“I talk big because I can, baby,”

“That right?”

Bucky’s breath stops in his throat and his cheeks burn sweet with a smile still dumbly plastered on his lips. He notices Steve glance down, however momentary, and lets his arms open to bring Steve in closer.

“I kinda like it when you talk big.” There’s a hand pacing up onto the back of Bucky’s neck.

“Why?”

“Like you said—you can. It means you’ve got nothing to prove to me,”

“I feel like I do,”

“You don’t.” Steve shakes his head and starts to run his fingers through the hair on Bucky’s nape and Bucky’s knees give out some. “There isn’t a thing you have to prove to me.”

Bucky looks up, unaware his gaze had dropped, and smiles in careful pulls. He finds his body shifting closer as the snow begins to twirl and twist down faster around them. “How come?” His voice is softer than he expects and it shows in the way Steve smiles back, gentle and damningly hopeful. Bucky’s lungs start to close. Steve moves forward until they’re nose to nose, and Bucky’s fingers curl into the lapels of Steve’s jacket with a final push for their lips.

Steve tastes like the sweet mint he popped in after they left. And like complacent warmth; he’s so wonderfully warm Bucky sighs as Steve’s fingers press into his nape for his lips to work again.

They stay there, quiet.

Steve slips back and Bucky whines. He opens his eyes just as Steve moves his hand and rubs his thumb along Bucky’s jaw. Bucky sighs, leans into the touch, hands already aching with the predicament of leaving Steve.

“You don’t have to prove anything to me because I feel like I can trust you as you are.”

Bucky’s heart jumps to his throat, and he must be looking so lonesome and grateful because Steve keeps smiling like all he sees in the world is Bucky. He wants to tease, to poke fun at Steve’s sappy honesty but his heart’s beating too hard and too fast against his rib cage for his lips to move properly. He doesn’t understand this.

Bucky kisses him again. “Goodnight.”

“So I’ll be seeing you again?” Steve doesn’t let go of their hands quite yet when Bucky forces himself to move. He shrugs, a smile still jerking at the corners of his lips. “You ain’t half bad, so why not,”

“Will you text me when you get home?”

“Worked wonders last time I did.”

Steve smiles and lets go. “The offer for the ride’s still open,”

“I’ll be fine. Thanks,”

“Alright. Goodnight.”

“Night, Stevie.”

Steve smiles and Bucky feels that familiar rose bloom across his cheeks. He starts walking back the way they came, hands in pockets, gaze faltering back to Steve once the car starts and he leaves. He’s gone in minutes, turning the corner and out of Bucky’s line of sight.

Bucky breathes in air too frigid for his lungs and immediately wraps his hands over his biceps, arms crossed and chin tucked to his chest as he focuses on not slipping over the dampening snow. He thinks back to the moment he saw Steve on the subway.

He’s really, seriously, disastrously fucked.

 

—

 

“You got this, kid. Lemme see those hands.”

The swish of the tightening laces. A loud clap against boxing gloves. Gentle slaps against tough cheeks.

“He’s fast on his feet but his hands are sloppy. Watch ‘em for openings. Keep your hands up and get him off his feet.”

Exhales, slow and deep and out the nose. Soft black silk ribboned around hard muscles and a hood shadowing grey-blue eyes. A hand squeezing broad, lean shoulders. Bouncing on the balls of swift feet. “We’ve run through this a million times. C’mon, where’s that Winter Soldier stare?”

Brows set down and eyes icing over, jaw setting and lips forming a hard line. A shadow forms over everything below his nose. Now eyes are revealed.

“What do you got to lose?”

 _Steve._ “Nothin’,”

“Attaboy. You ready?”

“Yessir.”

Bucky opens his mouth and lets the mouth guard fit in place over his teeth. He clamps down and shakes himself out to warm the gaps between his bones and muscles. The glaring locker room lights all tunnel down forward down to the ring. He starts to walk, steps heavy and steady as tendrils of hair fall over his eyes. All he sees are flashing lights, and all he hears is the numbing roar of a crowd and shouts that all soon start to fade. The curtain pulls away and he comes out.

“Stepping up is the one, the only, Russia’s finest and toughest, straight from Moscow and now out of Brooklyn, the Winter Soldier—Bucky Barnes!”

There’s shouting all around, arms and hands reaching out to touch him, recorders and phones all under his nose, hands on his shoulders and the occasional shriek that’s too close for comfort. He feels weightless, austere; his muscles release and his eyes close to breathe in the empty expanse in front of him. He doesn’t hear or see anyone anymore but the ring and his opponent and the lights that rain down in bursts.

He doesn’t know what kind of idiot calls himself “Starlord”. He doesn’t know much beyond his opponent other than the fact that he’s from California, named Peter Quill and has a killer cross-combination capable of knocking someone flat on their face. It got him this far.

Bucky slips one foot in between the rungs and lets his body follow through; his hood comes off onto his shoulders, covering some of the shiny lettering on his back as he steps forward to the middle of the ring. He glares at Quill, who laughs and says, “Now I know why you’re called the Winter Soldier.”

Bucky says nothing.

“Tough one to impress ain’t he, folks?” Bucky can tell who hasn’t seen him fight from the laughter that follows Quill, and lets himself the pleasure of a brief smirk. They shake gloves and turn to their respective corners.

Bucky takes off his robe and tosses it to Fury, who takes it with a quick snap from the air. He bounces on the balls of his feet as Fury slaps his cheeks and reaches around to tighten his ponytail. “Now I need you to focus. This fight’s either gonna be over after two rounds or eight and you don’t wanna drag it too far out. Focus and keep your damn hands up. Bring it back for me,”

“Yessir,”

“Good. Now go out there and kick some ass.”

Bucky nods and swipes back to the center of the ring, wringing his hands and shaking his head. He bumps gloves with Quill and holds himself forward on the balls of his feet. He glares, bounces, waits. The bell goes off and his left fist rushes forward for a jab. It stuns Quill, has him reeling back before he bounces back in position and circles around. Bucky advances.

Jab, jab, jab cross, left hook, jab, uppercut, stagger. Block, counter, jab cross, left hook. Block, block, grunt, miss.

“C’mon, son, get him off his feet!” Fury’s warning comes too late because Bucky’s jaw snaps to the side. He grits his teeth and ducks out of the jab cross combination that comes sprinting for his face. The opening gives him way for a quick jabs and a final hook before the bell goes off.

Bucky’s learned long ago to ignore the crowd. They can jeer or cheer; he can be thrown roses or wasted dreams and all he can do is get in the ring, fight, get off, and go home with the mental weight of it all coming down at once in those moments when he’s alone. He’s learned it’s better not to listen. But when he steps out again the Winter Soldier comes back and Bucky Barnes retreats and sometimes he can find the two blurring together and he doesn’t know what scares him more: the fact that it happens or the fact that he lets it happen.

Fury scrambles into the ring and crouches in front of Bucky, who grimaces as Fury drags a towel across his face and shoulders. “You’re holdin’ out pretty well. All you gotta do is keep that and your hands up. You’ve gotta one up him,”

Fury nudges Bucky’s mouth with a water bottle and Bucky parts his lips. He swishes and spits.

“Your reputation’s going to let you hand him his ass. Use it.”

Bucky thinks that’s a strange way of putting things but stands back up and treads to the center of the ring.

Gloves bump and the bell goes off. Once, twice, now three times and the draw remains.

On a counter Quill jabs and follows with an elbow to the jaw that burns more than it should. The summer asphalt is too close again and the ref’s shout pierces straight through his eardrum. “Point deduction! Try it again and you’re disqualified, son.” The ref pushes Quill to his corner and Bucky to his for a restart.

Bucky grins and wipes the corner of his mouth, spitting out blood before his hands run up in front of his face and parallel to one another. The bell goes off again and Bucky waits on his toes. He lets Quill come to him. Dodge, block, dodge, counter, repeat. He sneaks in a brutal hook to the jaw that has Quill reeling against the ropes of the ring. Bucky stands in front of him, hands up and balance steady and glare going straight through brown eyes  His fists clench heavy and he inhales.

Jab, jab cross, jab cross, left hook, uppercut.

Quill’s knees give out. He slips down the ropes and onto the floor, and Bucky steps back for the countdown. Ten.

Quill flips to his stomach. Nine.

Fists bracket his body. Eight.

He pushes up and arms rattle. Seven.

Back muscles convulse and collapse. Six.

Knees skirt across the floor. Five.

An arm hooks around a rope. Four.

The right shoulder gives way. Three.

Both arms hook around the ropes. Two.

Bucky wipes at his bleeding nose and stares as Quill’s body returns to the floor. One.

The crowd explodes and Bucky lifts his head up to stare at the blinding lights and close his eyes. He breathes with his mouth and drinks in the noise that goes white. His eyes open when the ref wraps a hand around his wrist and throws up his arm with the announcement of winner on his lips.

Bucky turns to Quill and gives his gloved fist a friendly bump. “You ain’t half bad,” he pokes.

“Shit really? Thanks, dude. I’m fucking stoked the Soldier’s making a comeback.”

Bucky smirks. “Thanks. Drop by sometime. I wanna see if I can show you a thing or two,”

“No fucking way,”

“Yeah. Hope I’ll see you around.”

“You fucking bet, man. It’s an honor to have my ass kicked by you.”

Bucky laughs and walks off to Fury’s crossed arms and confident smirk. He steps out of the ring and hops down to the ground, where he’s greeted with a slap to his sweaty back. A towel and water bottle follow as he walks past the shouting, hellish crowd to the complacent quiet of the locker room. He sits on the bench, eyes closed and head resting against the cool metal of the lockers. He lets himself smile while Fury paces in front of him. “Goddamn you pulled some shit tonight,”

Bucky chortles. “It’s not like I could’ve backed out,”

“So you’re staying on?”

Bucky pulls at one end of the lace on his glove with his teeth and fumbles with the other clumsy glove to undo it. “Yeah. I am. I’m not backing down on this,”

“You’re not backing out?”

“I’m not backing out.”

“Good. Because at least three news channels and fifteen newspapers wanna talk to you now.”

Bucky’s barely got a question out of his mouth when a rush of cameras and clamor flood in all around him. Fury’s gone and Bucky scrambles to face the closest microphone.

“Mr. Barnes, congratulations on your win,” the voice comes from a bug-eyed, toothpick of a reporter Bucky immediately recognizes as Gordon Schumacher. He bites back the smirk and nods his thanks. “What can we expect from you now that you’ve made a comeback?”

“Like you said, Gordon, the battle up is gonna be a ninety degree incline and a lotta people aren’t even sure if I’m gonna make it that far. But I think tonight’s fight levels out the playing field.”

Gordon bristles and all Bucky does is turn to the next closest microphone. He manages to take off his gloves when the next reporter speaks.

“Again, wonderful finish on Peter Quill out there. The Soldier is back and the fans are excited. Anything you want to say to them?”

“Thank you is all I can really say. I’m grateful for all the shit they’ve stood through with me and I don’t wanna let them down. They don’t deserve that and I’m not gonna let it happen. So just let ‘em keep doin’ what they’re doin’.”

More flashes and sound bites until Bucky’s alone and his mouth is parched. As he’s packing up, he hears a shy scuffle of sneakers against the tiled floor.

There’s a boy standing there, and Bucky guesses he can’t be older than twenty when he looks up. He pushes too big glasses up his nose and almost drops his notebook and iPhone in the process as he clambers forward. “Shit. I shouldn’t— I’ll leave, sorry Mr. Barnes,”

He turns and Bucky clears his throat. He’s got a feeling this kid’s going to be ruined if he doesn’t go back to his boss with a story—or picture, judging by the camera dangling from his neck. “Which paper you work for?”

The boy turns back around and scrambles for his pen when it drops to the floor. “ _Daily_ —sorry, the _Daily Bugle_. I’m Peter Parker, by the way,”

“Nice to meet you. And I’ve got time,”

“Really? Swell, um, could I get a picture of you…?” He fumbles with his camera and Bucky sits down, fingers crossed and forearms pressing down into his elbows. “How do you want me?”

“You look perfect like that, hold on…”

Bucky stays still as Peter walks some paces in front of him and scrunches his face behind his camera. He looks into the camera, jaw relaxed and eyes squinting slightly when the flash goes off. Peter stands and Bucky pulls his duffel bag off the bench to give him some room for the interview. Peter pushes his glasses back up again and sits down next to Bucky, who draws the towel off his shoulders and jams it into his bag.

“Thanks for doing this,”

“It’s just another part of the job,”

“I’m not keeping you from anything, am I?”

“Nah. Ask on,”

“Okay, hold on… so how’d you feel about tonight?”

“I was real nervous at first. I had a lot on the line and a lot to live up to after what happened in Chicago. But sometimes you gotta let that shit go and give it your all,”

“Are we gonna see you next week, now that you’ve won?”

“Yeah. I think I’ve had enough of backing out now,”

“Is there anything that’s scaring you now for the future?”

Bucky purses his lips and glances down at his lap. There isn’t a thing about Brock and Pierce that he isn’t afraid of; hell the whole future is staring him down with a dagger between its teeth and clawed hands. There comes the awful weight of expectation storming down on him and his shoulders slump and he doesn’t know if he can manage the failure that’s bound to come or the humiliation or the god awful pain of it all.

“Mr. Barnes?”

Bucky snaps back to attention, Peter looking at him with wide eyes and a hand that’s pressing down into his notepad. “Yeah, sorry,” he clears his throat again. “There are things to be worried about but nothin’ to be scared of. I think we’ll all see at some point, alright?”

Peter nods and scribbles down at his notebook with the cap stuck in his mouth. The notion reminds Bucky of Steve. “Can I take a few more pictures? I just need you to… act natural, I guess? Thanks for this,”

“It’s no problem, kid.”

Bucky stands and wraps his hair up in its signature bun. His hand slips and few strands come undone halfway, to which a white flash follows. He pulls his sweater on and throws his bag over his shoulder, keys in hand, turning to face Peter with a final flash of light. The camera falls down to Peter’s chest and he smiles brighter than the camera flash. “Thank you, Mr. Barnes. You should check the papers tomorrow.”

Bucky smiles back, gentle and reserved simply from the exhaustion wracking through his bones and seams. “Will do. The _Bugle_ , right?”

“Yessir. Goodnight!”

He’s scrambling out and waving before Bucky has the time to return the formality. He sighs and fiddles with his keys as he steps outside the locker room and back into the late city autumn. Last night’s snow looks fresh. Bucky walks to his motorcycle with one hand on the wall beside him to save himself from slipping. He makes it in one piece and rearranges the duffel bag to rest against his lower back. A soft chill runs through his hair and reminds him to be just a dash faster.

The hot shower he takes when he gets home almost makes him fall asleep standing up. But it’s nice, he thinks, and he can enjoy nice things every once in awhile without feeling like he doesn’t deserve them.

Zemo mewls behind the door and throws his paws in the space between the door and the floor. Bucky wraps the towel around his waist plays with Zemo’s paws, chortling with every soft grab and swipe Zemo makes for his fingers. When his hands tire out he stands and leaves the shower, hand flipping on the fan and turning off the light simultaneously. He dresses in silence but groans with every lift of his arms and twist of his torso. Bruises bloom across his upper arms and chest; there’s a cut just above the right side curve of his brow bone that’s bleeding down to his jaw. He doesn’t notice until he’s back in the bathroom with an NYU sweater on and phone playing music.

Steve texts right as Bucky dabs rubbing alcohol onto his cut and wipes the cherry blood away. He looks down too long and presses down on the cut more than he needs; whipping back with a hiss he stands in agony until his free hand can see what Steve’s decided to tell him at this ungodly hour. He should be asleep, just like any other human being, but there he is texting Bucky at 1 in the morning.

 

_I saw you on TV tonight._

 

Bucky doesn’t open the text further and goes straight to bed.

 

—

 

He doesn’t talk to Steve for a few days until someone calls in the morning and he forgets to check the caller ID again. “Hello?”

“Bucky?”

“Steve,” _fuckfuckfuckfuck_ —

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?”

“I called a few times and you didn’t pick up. Guess you accidentally picked up just now,”

“Steve, I… fuck, I’m sorry. Could we meet somewhere and talk?”

“Yeah, of course. Are you sure everything’s okay?” Steve sounds so concerned and negligent of his own feelings Bucky wants to punch himself in the face.

“We’ll talk about it when I see you,”

“Is it too much to ask you to meet me at the Starbucks next to the college?”

“No, ‘course not. I’ll be there soon,”

“Okay.”

“Brooklyn, right?”

“Yeah.”

Bucky hangs up first and covers his face with his hands. He can’t do this. He wants to but something in his head keeps saying no, keeps saying he should just pull back from this because he doesn’t have the experience or the heart to carry something as special as Steve because Steve is sunshine in human form, is happiness and sweetness and something Bucky can’t live up to.

 

_“If you keep holdin’ yourself back like this, you ain’t ever gonna taste happiness, sweetheart.”_

_“What’s the use, Ma?”_

_“Are you really gonna put your life on hold forever? You’re strong, you’re smart, you’re the man your father could never be,”_

_She places a hand under his chin and lifts his gaze, her own as sweet and complacent as the summer breeze through seaside flowers. “You’re my boy, after all.”_

 

He grabs his keys and leaves in black slacks and a white shirt, boots on and leather jacket wound against his body as he puts on gloves and grabs his keys. He slips the cycle today and heads for the subway. The cold bites and chastises him for not wearing enough to bear against the weather that’s below the freezing point in the morning.

He boards in the direction of Brooklyn College, hand extended before it clasps around one of the poles in subway car. He notices the soft tremor that shifts through his spine and to his hands. He hooks an arm around the metal pole to tuck his hands into his pockets instead, and lets his gaze concentrate on the floor.

It’s on the third stop there someone pulls on his sleeve in consistent jerks. He looks down to see a little boy, probably eight or nine years old, and an embarrassed mother trying to move her son away from bothering the stranger. “‘Scuse me, Mr. Barnes?” He asks.

Bucky smiles and squats down once the train starts moving. “That’s me. What can I do for ya?”

The mother blushes and hides behind her hand as the boy pulls out a tiny notebook and pen and opens to a clean page. “I’m sorry, really,” she says, and Bucky looks up to give her a noncommittal smile. “No need t’be, ma’am.” He looks back towards her son, who now has his chin tucked to his chest and his notebook and pen extended. “Wouldya mind signing this for me?” He bites his lip as Bucky gently takes the extended materials. “Not at all. What’s your name?”

“Ben.”

With the pen between his fingers, Bucky scrawls a signature on the corner of the page with a star and smiley face. Beneath it, he writes out, “ _Ben—stay kind_.”

He hears a phone camera shutter, assuming it’s the mother, and caps the pen before returning it to the rightful owner. Ben beams, bright and elated before giving an excited thanks along with the milder, more relieved one of his mother. They step off at the next stop, and Bucky gives a small wave when they disappear into the unknown of the city’s populace to leave Bucky amidst his thoughts on Steve. He doesn’t know what he’s going to say or if he’s going to be able to say it if it comes to mind at all. He’s fucked a lot up already.

The stop off Brooklyn College comes too fast once Bucky finds himself climbing the escalator with his head down and body ready to face the cold. It’s snowing again—not too strange in October but still out of place—when he hits the sidewalk and lets his brain readjust when he sees the signs towards the school. The wind blows down his neck and he zips his jacket further up his chest to forgo the presentability idea he had in mind.

There are five Starbucks’ and all along two blocks. Bucky swears, sighs, and chooses the one closest to the school entrance. He walks in and tries to hide from the glares when the cold comes in with him on a frantic search for Steve.

“Bucky,”

The voice is soft, languid and barely there, and Bucky turns to see Steve holed up on a loveseat with one leg tucked under his body and a stack of papers by his foot on the ground. His sweater, soft blue, stretches across his chest and winds wonderfully tight around his arms, and Bucky has trouble maneuvering around the seats and tables and crowds with Steve looking at him, gentle concern ever on his face.

Steve moves the newspaper from where it’s resting and Bucky sees the company—the _Daily Bugle_ , and he’s featured right on the cover with one of the pictures Peter took. It’s the one of him doing his hair, gaze down and hands unimpressively complicated as they tie together some strands of brown and faded gold. The gold was from one of Natasha’s hair dye splurges and Bucky’d reluctantly agreed to have her try something out on him. He looks to Steve, who places his coffee on the table behind him and takes Bucky’s hand to guide him down and all Bucky can do is collapse and stare.

“You okay?” Steve asks, tilting his head to the side a bit. Bucky sighs and rubs his face. “You said you saw me on TV,”

“Good to see you too,”

Bucky sighs and Steve smiles in response, leaning forward to nudge his lips against Bucky’s shaven cheek. Bucky’s shoulders slump and his body leans closer, free strands of hair falling into his eyes for Steve to push away with his fingers. “I’m sorry, I’m just— God, I dunno,”

“I can wait.”

Bucky swallows and sits up, arm pressed into the side of the loveseat with Steve carding through his hair. “When you saw me on TV, Steve, and I need you t’be honest with me,”

He’s shaking. He can tell when Steve takes his hands between his own to warm them after drawing his hand out of Bucky’s hair.

“Seeing me there and being with me, I— did you want t’back out and stop seeing me?”

The corners of Steve’s lips pull down and his shoulders round backward. Bucky bites down on his lip as he tries to look away but his eyes and body are unrelenting, like they want him to face this miserable predicament head on.

“Why’re you going on thinking things like that?”

“That doesn’t answer the question,”

Steve sighs and squeezes Bucky’s hands. “No. I didn’t. First thing I thought of was how unlucky you’d have to be to be on the end of that wicked left hook you got,” Bucky feels Steve’s thumb tap down on his knuckles. “Why would I want to leave someone like you?”

“‘M a violent person Stevie, it’s what I do for a livin’, keeps me in business,”

“You’re not. I’m not going anywhere just because that’s what you gotta do to get by,”

“You aren’t afraid of me hurtin’ you?”

“Bucky c’mon, now you’re talking out of your ass.”

Bucky’s eyes widen. Breathing gets difficult, his posture slumps, and Steve brushes his hair from his face again. “I want to be with you,” Steve’s voice is softer, sweeter. “I wanna see where we can go because I like you and when you like someone you gotta do shit to see if you can enjoy your time together.”

Bucky opens the hand beneath Steve’s and turns it over to interlock their fingers. He still can’t look Steve in the eye until Steve brackets a hand against his cheek and waits, calmly, until Bucky has the strength to look up a second time. Fuck Steve looks earnest and soft, like a love song on a radio turned down just enough to be heard but not to the point of strain and Bucky doesn’t think comparing this angel to a goddamn _radio_ is anywhere near appropriate for any situation between them.

He admits he’s afraid. He’s afraid of screwing up, of losing what warmth he’s got clutching between his fingers and pressing into his chest. He’s afraid of the disappointment that’s crawling up into his chest and throat.

“I don’t want you t’date some disappointment.”

“Bucky, c’mon. Why do you think you’re a disappointment?”

Bucky squirms and Steve drops his hand from Bucky’s face back into his lap. Bucky doesn’t make quite the move back, to reach out and hold some part of Steve when his mind’s starting to unravel. “I haven’t really dated…”

“A guy,”

“Yeah. I mean I did, but I chickened out and I don’t… I don’t wanna have you put so much investment in me t’find out I’m not…” he rubs his hands over his face in frustration and sighs heavily from behind his hands. They rake back and tuck tendrils of hair behind his ears.

“I don’t want you t’feel like I’m using you. And I don’t want— I don’t want to be a bad boyfriend, is what I’m tryin’ t’say.”

Something crashes in the Starbucks kitchen and yelling ensues as the smell of coffee revitalizes its already prevalent aroma in the air. When Bucky looks back from the disaster Steve’s face is unreadable. Bucky’s eyes duck down before Steve nudges his face back up by the bottom of his chin. He’s smiling and Bucky can feel his face grow hot. “I didn’t know we were officially boyfriends, now.”

Bucky’s cheeks run hotter.

“But I do know I want to be your boyfriend, even if I gotta be the first one,”

Bucky sighs and smiles, gaze flickering down briefly before looking back at Steve. “Okay,”

“Okay. If you were using me I don’t think you would’ve been able to get all flustered over nothing,”

“Baby, c’mon,”

“Maybe not nothing,” Steve kisses Bucky’s knuckles and Bucky realizes just how free Steve is with giving attention in a world of still shadows and demons.

“But something good,”

“Somethin’ good.” Bucky repeats quietly, as if trying to carve the thought and memory of all this into his brain. Steve smiles blindingly bright again.

“But we gotta talk about one thing,”

“And what’s that?”

“I’m gonna go blind if you keep smilin’ like the sun’s in your mouth.”

“Is that a line from your book?”

“Maybe. Lemme grab a coffee,”

“You’re staying?”

“Didya really think I’d be able to leave with you lookin’ the way you do?”

Steve smile crinkles the corners of his eyes and Bucky blushes with a swat to Steve’s arm. “Baby, come on, you're doing the smile again.”

 

—

 

They’re in Steve’s living room some weeks later.

Bucky’s notebook in his lap and his butt on the floor with Steve on the couch combing through brown hair with his fingers. Dinner and dessert leftovers rest in the refrigerator and dishes in the dishwasher; the kitchen shows no signs of flour on the countertops or the tomato sauce on the stove, or the broken egg on the floor and the outlines of a white kiss on pink cheeks. The walls don’t contain the laughter and the floor the tears from said laughter, only cleanliness and an incessant jerk on the corners of Bucky’s lips whenever he remembers one minute of detail in making their dinner. Steve leans down and presses a soft kiss to Bucky’s head.

Bucky looks up at Steve when his hand stops running through his hair. He’s thinking, has his finger running over his lips before he gets up with a start. “Can you make tea?” He asks and Bucky raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, but where you goin’?”

“I’m gonna get something from my room. Hang tight,”

Bucky grunts and gets up to shuffle into Steve’s kitchen to try to find a kettle and tea bags. “What kinda tea you want?” He calls.

“Whatever you want!”

“I don’t know shit about tea,”

“Are you serious?”

“Pretty damn serious—what the fuck is camomile?”

“It’s good for you, make it.”

Bucky sighs and stares at the box, draws out two tea bags, and sets the kettle. Steve emerges from his bedroom, holding a worn black Adidas shoebox in his hands with his glasses perched on his head. He jerks his head to the couch and Bucky finds something beautiful in the way Steve smiles and stands there, warm even in everything they are. There’s a grin nipping at the corners of Bucky’s mouth. “Need me to walk you over now that you don’t have your glasses on?” He baits as he presses a light kiss to Steve’s jaw and wraps his arms around his figure.

“You’re a real comedian,”

“No need to get bothered ‘bout your vision, baby.”

They laugh and Steve watches a second longer afterwards to see Bucky’s cheeks glaze pink. “C’mon. Wanna show you something.”

They move to the couch, hand in hand, and Steve moves the box between them after they’ve sat down. “What’s this?” Bucky asks, soft and sweet.

“Remember when I told you I was in the army?”

“Yeah,”

“Take a look.”

Bucky takes the shoebox from Steve’s hands, slowly and carefully, like it would fold if he gripped too tight and in the wrong spot. He tucks himself close against a warm chest, and Steve maneuvers his arm over Bucky’s shoulders until they fit together, coddled and just about perfect as perfect can get.

Bucky opens the box, fits the lid on the bottom. Pictures are held down by three medals, one bronze, one gold, and one Purple Heart. Bucky takes the gold in between his fingers, and he runs his thumb over the star and the encircled eagle engraved in the center. It’s small, only an inch across in diameter. He turns it over. “‘ _For gallantry in action_ ’,” his voice is quiet against the continuous whistle and whisper of the winter wind outside. He looks to Steve, who holds his hands over his bruised knuckles so they’d be able to look at the medal together. “It’s the Silver Star,” Steve begins.

“How’d you get it?”

“It’s a long story,”

“I have time. We got all the time we need.” Bucky cups one side of Steve’s cheek before kissing the other. His lips linger until Steve sighs and settles. “You know how hard it is for me to say no to you, don’t you?”

“I know that and more, baby.”

Steve sighs and Bucky grins, sly, running his hands through Steve’s hair until Steve gives. He turns and Bucky follows, hand still pacing over the blond hair.

“Fine.”

Bucky winks and nudges a final kiss to Steve’s jaw. He restrains the surprise of the tension he feels there, and instead takes Steve’s hand with the other still holding the Silver Star.

“We were on base waiting to get some intel on an extraction mission. A unit had been captured by the Taliban. It was late at night and cold, real cold for the middle of summer.” Bucky watches the words come off Steve’s lips more than he should listen, and he shifts uncomfortably at his own poor manners. Steve watches and waits until Bucky’s satisfied with crossing his wrists over Steve’s shoulder.

“There were about five of us all together: Morita, Gabe, Dum Dum, Junior; we had to drive from Herat to outside of this town, Karokh, some miles out in the mountains in a jeep our unit scummed from the Taliban. We couldn’t use the headlights, and the jeep didn’t have any blackouts. When we hit the base of the mountain we got out and climbed up the road. The only things we could use to see were night vision goggles and the blackouts on our guns.”

Bucky follows Steve’s hand to a folded, worn, delicate map of Herat Province. Inked sketches of Dari strike over the map’s sandy color, and Bucky can see scribbled notes in English and Dari alike. The English is in Steve’s hand, he knows by now, and it only makes him wonder where the beautiful strokes of Dari came from. Steve outlines the route with the tip of his index finger, following his story as he goes along. “It took us four hours to scale the climb. By the time we reached the city outskirts it was already three in the morning. We followed our coordinates to this base in the mountainside—it looked like this,”

He grabs the notebook stuffed under his thigh and opens to a clean page before his pencil hits the paper. Bucky runs his fingers through dirty blond hair with room to watch. The higher the mountain peak the sharper Steve sketches down on it. Bucky shifts forward, his elbow on Steve’s shoulder, palm supporting his cheek, and watches as that night comes to life. The rooms were pockets blown into the mountain with dynamite, and Steve explained it was all connected by a series of hallways and holding rooms. The sky is shaded graphite with tiny gaps for makeshift stars, and a bent back of a moon lays against the grey. Bucky watches until Steve’s hand stills and he takes a breath, as if bracing himself to go on. Bucky kisses Steve’s cheek again, strokes his hair, runs a thumb over his hand. “If you can’t—”

“No, I can.”

Bucky’s unconvinced and shakes his head, hair falling in front of his eyes for Steve to brush away with his hand. Bucky notices how it trembles on his skin but stills, with soft conviction, and all he can do is hold his breath and wait and watch.

“We snuck in and got what was left of the unit out. Some of them had been transported, some tortured or killed. Some just gone,” Steve’s voice falters.

“MIA,” Bucky murmurs, and squeezes Steve’s hand in his. Steve flips it over for their palms to lay steady against one another.

“We were rushing to leave when the sun started coming out. We needed to scale the mountain down with at least two men injured and the rest barely keeping it together. The looks on their faces, Buck… God. It was like they saw hell and a part of them stayed there even when they got out. We were halfway down the slope when we were spotted and a few foot soldiers came our way. I told my unit to run while I’d give them cover. Junior stayed with me, and I kept shouting at him to get out of there and fall back with the rest of the group. They shot him when they got close enough. He was twenty, Buck, and they took him away from his little sister and his mom in two seconds flat… so I surrendered and let them take me.”

Bucky wipes the tears running down Steve’s face with his hands and holds him, holds him close and warm and gentle as his lips find soft skin and hair to kiss. “Baby, baby, it’s okay… you did what you had to. You did what you had to.” He feels where Steve braces himself, hands clasped tightly over Bucky’s forearm and bicep as he hides his face against Bucky’s sore shoulder. Bucky doesn’t feel the usual rippling burn of exertion when he moves his hands to cradle Steve’s face. His thumbs wipe away tears, his fingers tangled in dirty blond hair, lips kissing over pale skin.

“Junior could’ve lived—”

“He made a choice,” Bucky quietly interjects. “You couldn’t’ve changed his mind,”

“I could’ve saved him. We could’ve gotten out with the others,”

“And lead the enemy back t’camp?” Bucky can’t find the words anymore, because he can’t feel any more ridiculous than he does now, sitting in the lap of someone who saved lives and protected more than just a nation and still ached all over for it.

He holds his breath when Steve looks back up at him. He runs his thumbs down Steve’s cheeks and wants to say something—an apology is the only thing that comes to mind—to make up for all that he’s just said and maybe, while he has the time, to back up and think about something better to say than what’s already been said.

When Steve still says nothing, Bucky clears his throat and keeps going, despite everything in his body telling him not to. “Everything you did was to make sure everyone lived. But you can’t save everyone, Stevie, no one can. No one’s invincible like that, t’save everyone, or to come out of somethin’ like that and act like nothin’ happened.” He holds his breath, because it’s getting increasingly difficult to avoid admitting that he can’t stand seeing Steve cry. He kisses his forehead again, hands catching Steve’s head when it falls; he feels the jaw tighten again.

“Do you have anywhere to be?” Steve finally asks, hushed and incoherent.

“Right here, with you.” Bucky licks his lips and refrains from kissing Steve again.

Steve looks up, slow and eyes still, and Bucky feels a chill run down his spine.  

“I don’t want to be anywhere else but here with you.”

He understands now, that this is only a fragment of the sadness he remembers seeing on Steve’s chest on their first date. Maybe there’s more, maybe there’s still something there he can’t quite see yet, or if he’ll see it at all.

But he knows he wants to stay, because he can’t stand not hearing Steve’s voice, or not seeing that smile on that face, or that solemn look of kindness whenever he hands over a few dollars to the homeless veteran on the side of the street. He can’t stand not making Steve laugh. He loves the the subtle smirk in his dares and the snark in his jokes, and the jerk in his brow when he’s lost in thought, or the way he smiles whenever they kiss and thumbs across Bucky’s lower back. Bucky chokes a little, on air, and gently wraps his arms back around Steve’s neck to kiss him.

He presses their foreheads together, eyes closed, making a soft keening sound when Steve runs a hand through his hair and they come closer. Steve’s breathing softly down Bucky’s neck, most of the tears gone but the sadness still there.

“You don’t have to stay.”

“I want to.”

Bucky feels Steve shift and wrap his arms tighter around his bruised waist. He winces, and Steve looks back up, edge of a smile on his lips. “Bruises?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe.”

And when Steve lies Bucky down on his back and lifts his shirt to kiss his bruises, rising only to get tea—it tastes fucking miserable but Bucky drinks it all—Bucky cups a hand around Steve’s cheek and knows.

 

—

 

Bucky ends practice with Fury yelling after him and his feet moving too quickly for the rest of his body to catch up with. “Where do you think you’re goin’?” Fury shouts after him, and Bucky reckons it’d be polite to stop. He turns around, readjusts the strap of his duffel bag on his shoulder and waits for Fury to catch up. Bucky grins. “I’ve got a date tonight,”

“Say again? A date?”

“Yeah, a date,”

Fury looks pleasantly surprised; there’s a smile on his face where a frown should be and Bucky finds it oddly comforting. “It’s good, you gettin’ yourself out there,”

“Thanks, I guess?”

“What’s her name?”

“Her—Steph… Stephanie,”

“She good to you?”

He thinks of the way Steve kissed his bruises last week, and the way he massaged his back from his most recent fight, two nights ago. He thinks of the sweat that lined his face when he came in Steve’s hand that same night, gasping, head knocking back against a pillow, clenching the back of Steve’s shirt, and the way Steve had marked his neck with lips and teeth. He rubs at a fading hickey covered by his sweaty towel. “Yeah. Yeah, she really is,” the lie’s bitter. “I’m lucky to have her, really.”

Fury has a troubled smile on his face; it’s barely discernible from what Bucky can’t guess he feels. “Get a move on. Need you fresh tomorrow, so take it easy tonight.”

“I will.”

He calls Steve when he leaves the gym. “Hey baby,” he says, smile wide when Steve answers with a breathy, “Hello?”

“We still on for tonight?” He asks as the snow sifts down from the sky and a distant ring of sleigh bells line the streets.

Steve laughs on the other end of the phone. “‘Course we are. Don’t tell me you’re gonna chicken out because you’re nervous about meeting my friends,”

“I’m not. I’m just worried about how you’re gonna deal with Nat,”

“I can handle, baby. I gotta warn you though, Sam’s been dying to meet you.”

“Has he? Nat can say the same about you, y’know. She thinks you’re cute,”

“Really? Which picture of us did you show her?”

“The one of us in bed with the blankets covering our mouths, the time I stayed the night,”

“It’s my favorite, y’know. I saved it as my phone wallpaper.”

Bucky’s mouth pulls into a wider smile, and he wonders why he still hasn’t gotten rid of his Apple wallpaper of Mars to replace it with Steve. It’s the only other world he really knows now.

“I gotta warn you, I’ve never ice skated in my life,” he finds himself saying, smile still poking at his lips when he starts the descent down towards the metro.

“I’ll hold your hand.” There’s a smirk in Steve’s voice, and Bucky hates how he has to cut him off soon to avoid the cruelty and incapability of cell reception. “I’m lookin’ forward to it. I’ll see you soon, Stevie.”

“See you, Buck.”

Steve says something beyond that Bucky couldn’t quite get when he prematurely ends the call. He frowns and boards the metro, pocketing his phone after changing his homescreen background to Steve, bent over the paperwork he’s laid on the legs Bucky’s thrown into his lap. His glasses are slipping off his face, and there’s a smile at the corner of his mouth because he knows Bucky’s taking the picture; his hair’s falling to his eyes and Bucky misses the feeling of brushing it away to kiss him.

He taps his fingers across his wrists, because he remembers the exhilarating rush of having them pinned over his head and lips pressing against the side of his mouth. He remembers trembling, heart beating faster than any fight he’s ever been in and Steve murmuring something sweet into his ear, breath hot and hands all over.

His duffel bag presses down into his lap and covers it when he leaves.

Natasha calls when he’s halfway out the shower, stumbling over his feet to grab the phone and put it on speaker. “Hey,”

“I’m outside, buzz me in,”

“I just got out the shower, Nat,”

“You’d rather I freeze?”

Bucky sighs as he dries his feet on the towel outside the tub and clambers to the door. He buzzes her in and unlocks his front door, disappearing to his bedroom to dress.

Natasha finds him in the bathroom doing his hair. “Dry it first before you do anything else. You’ll catch cold.” She says, leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed and slick straight hair framing her face. He looks at her reflection in the mirror and chuckles, picking up his hair dryer and turning it on as he runs his fingers through his hair. “Anythin’ else I should know?”

“Clint’s raiding your kitchen,”

“Why? We’re about to go eat anyways,”

“You know that doesn’t stop him.”

She smirks and Bucky shakes his head, unplugging the hair dryer once he’s turned it off and pulled his hair up into a bun. “C’mere,” Natasha says. “You know you’ve been smiling a lot more now that Steve’s around,” she undoes his bun to opt for a looser one, gently pulling soft tendrils to curl slightly around his face to hold dark but to sway in the wind if prompted.

Bucky looks at her at the mention of Steve. “Have I?”

“Yeah, you have.” She doesn’t elaborate, and Bucky doesn’t need her to. He knows he’s been happier, now with someone new in his life, with someone who finds the sweetness in each winter breeze and the cacophony of creaking mattresses. His fingers ache for Steve’s touch and the closeness of his skin, and the soft lips that press to his cheek whenever he smiles.

Bucky walks into the kitchen with Clint eating Frosted Flakes by the handful from the box. He sighs and grabs his keys off the bar counter. “Clean up the crumbs, at least.” He says, pocketing his keys before walking towards the front door to put on and lace up his boots. He can hear Natasha sucking her teeth and swatting Clint, and the pained yelp that follows before the reluctant sweeping of a broom. He smirks.

He stands when Clint and Natasha grab their scarves and jackets off the coat rack pinned to the wall adjacent to the door, and they leave with Zemo mewling behind them.

They meet Steve and Sam just outside the ice rink at Bryant Park over half an hour later than when they’re supposed to meet, and Bucky prays never to let Clint drive them anywhere ever again. He’s called Steve a number of times, apologizing for the traffic on Roosevelt and feeling shaky all the way down to his bones from the embarrassment with Steve’s soft voice telling him it’s okay. They find a space at a parking lot ten minutes away, pressed together for warmth, noses and mouths buried in their scarves and hands in pockets.

“Promise to drive us next time, Nat?” Bucky asks through chattering teeth when they start walking through a red light.

“Listen, I am a perfectly capable driver, asshat,” Clint pokes.

“A perfectly capable driver wouldn’t have gotten us fucking stuck ten blocks on the other side of Bryant Park, _asshat_ ,”

“It doesn’t matter which side you go on as long as you get to the same place,”

“And time don’t mean a thing to you, huh?”

“Will you two tear each other apart later, please?” Natasha interjects when they enter the park. “Stop being rude when you have dates to be on.”

She cuts them off with a glare and waves to a wonderfully familiar figure in the distance, one Bucky almost immediately recognizes through the snow and floodlights. He smiles, the cold around him gone, laughing when Steve jogs over and pulls him in for a much-missed kiss over his nose and lips. There’s a blush warming his cheeks, and Bucky finds his fingers falling onto the neck Steve’s dark blue scarf. “Steve, this is Natasha and Clint,” he introduces softly, aware of the two men quietly standing behind Steve.

“Pleasure.” Steve replies, extending a hand to Natasha and Clint who shake it warmly and give their polite greetings in response. “Buck, this is Sam,” Steve stands aside for Sam to step forward and shake Bucky’s hand. “Good to finally meet you, man. This kid would not shut up about you,” he laughs, and Bucky laughs with him, both of them watching Steve bite his lip and mutter something under his breath. Sam swats Steve’s arm, Steve lazily pushing it aside before he introduces the quieter man next to them. “And this is T’challa,” he says, and Bucky’s struck by the quiet yet powerful disposition in the way T’challa holds himself. “Good to meet you.” He says, and Bucky can only nod and smile politely in return. T’challa has an accent, and Bucky knows better than to veer on it now.

“You guys can go on ahead now,” Clint says. “I’ll hang out with T’challa, here. What’s up, man?”

There’s a shared giggle in reaction to the disdain on T’challa’s face. “You sure you don’t want to come with us?” Steve asks.

T’challa shakes his head. “Yes. I am fine where I am.”

Bucky slips his hand into Steve’s, squeezing warmly in nervous anticipation, and they make their way to the rental kiosk off on the side of the rink. They pay, check out skates; Steve tightens and checks Bucky’s, pressing the each blade against his gut as he does so and unaware of the red cheeks and bright blue eyes favored in his direction. “You ready?” He asks, and Bucky can’t find it in himself to say no, or to admit he’s afraid of falling. So instead he nods, and Steve smiles before kissing him and helping him up. He makes awkward chicken strides to the gate, holding Steve’s hand, watching the way his skates slip over the icy surface as he turns to take Bucky’s hand. Bucky shakes his head. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

“I promised you I’d hold your hand.” Steve kisses one of Bucky’s hands and Bucky blushes, swearing under his breath before making the first step out onto the ice. His knees freeze up and his hands clutch Steve’s, digging into his jacket sleeves. “Easy, easy—bend your knees, lean forward,” Steve skates backwards, step, step, glide, Bucky hanging on as the red rushes to his cheeks and he can feel eyes on his back. “Bend your knees, babe,” Steve coaxes and Bucky listens, leaning forward when his knees bend and balancing almost in exact time. His feet copy Steve’s, step, step, glide. “Perfect,” is his praise, and Bucky grins as Steve moves to his side and they start moving together. He laughs, overcome with the joy of it all, and interlocks his fingers with Steve’s when they start making gentle rounds.

Steve lets go and Bucky finds himself moving along in perfect time. Natasha pulls up in front of him and turns until she’s skating backwards. “Look at you,” she drawls, smile ever so bright on her face. “You look good.”

“Yeah, well, what can I say.”

She rolls his eyes and watches Steve—who’s talking to Sam—and stops him when he pulls up to them. “Do you do synchronized skating?” She asks, and Bucky can see the excitement brimming at her fingertips. Steve smiles, abashed, and Bucky almost runs into a wall. It’s too characteristic of Natasha to say something as out there as that to someone she’s known for five minutes, but he assumes longer time—he did tell her Steve used to figure skate.

“Not really,” Steve shrugs, but the look on Natasha’s face tells Bucky all that he needs to know. “Nat, you’re not gonna—”

She’s already taken Steve’s hand and skated to the center of the rink, chatting excitedly with him and Bucky can only smile at the way Steve looks at her.

“Hey, man!” Sam’s next to him in seconds.  Bucky shakes his head and puts his hands in his pockets with a grin. “Hey,”

“We both got ditched by our dates, huh,”

“Looks like, man,” Bucky feels too happy. “Good to meet you, by the way,”

“Likewise. Steve wouldn’t stop talkin’ about you, you know,”

“Really?”

“Yeah, man. It’s always Bucky-this and Bucky-that and how you box and write. Blondie over there thinks it’s real hot,”

Bucky laughs loud. “No way,”

“I’m tellin’ you, man. Ain’t a day goes by without him gushin’ all about one of your fights,”

“Nah, c’mon,”

“You ain’t half bad.”

Bucky looks over, watching Steve’s hands on Natasha’s waist as they’re about to practice a spin. He returns his gaze to Sam. “How’d you two meet?”

“Some VA meeting last year,”

“So you both fought in the war?”

“Yeah.”

Bucky nods and doesn’t press the situation any further than he thinks he should. Before he can speak again he’s drawn by a rush of violently red hair spinning in the sky, and strong arms outstretched to catch a body and let it glide back down on the ice before it whips out again and fall in unison. Bucky stops, grabs the edge of the rink wall behind him. He watches as Natasha and Steve’s legs copy one another in almost perfect time, her delicate hands resting in his before he pulls her up and spins her in the air. He catches one hand, bends on one knee, the other outstretched to match his arm as his spins with Natasha curling her back up away from the ice. Bucky watches as he gets up, slowly, and they bow with a burst of applause.

He wonders how much of the dance he’s missed.

But he skates over to them, smile wide, and Steve kisses his hands. “I can teach you that sometime,”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Bucky cups his cheeks and kisses him. Simple, soft. Complacent. He’s brimming with a joy he can’t hold in his bones and Steve feels it, Bucky knows he does with the way one thumb presses up on his cleft chin. He breaks away, smile wide on his face, as Steve takes his hand. Sam clears his throat. “We should get some hot chocolate. I know this great place down the street,”

“Can we meet you there?” Bucky rubs his thumbs against the the back of Steve’s hand.

Sam shrugs. “Yeah, sure. I’ll get us a table and we’ll wait for your dopey asses,”

Bucky bites his lip when he smiles and Steve only sighs but the smile on his lips is hard to miss. “Just text me the address.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Sam and Natasha skate back before Bucky sneaks a kiss to Steve’s temple and squeezes his hand before they begin their rounds.

“I hear you have a fight in Boston in a few days,”

Bucky frowns. “Yeah, I do. And I really don’t wanna go,”

“Why?”

“I’ll be far away from you,”

Steve grins, kisses Bucky’s temple. “You’re gonna do fine without me,”

“I’m gonna miss you kissing me after a fight, right where everythin’ hurts,”

“And the tea?”

“Fuck the tea. It’s gonna be mostly you.”

Steve twists and skates in front of him, Bucky copying his speed and reflecting each glide across the ice. He’s holding Steve’s hands, keeping the pale skin warm between his gloved hands and looking at him with what he thinks just might be the brightest smile he’s ever sported. Steve’s smiling back with a particular softness Bucky can’t place. “You know what I’m not gonna miss?” Steve asks, head slightly tilted to the side. Bucky quirks a coy brow and sticks his chin out. “What?”

“A good night’s sleep,”

“Oh, so you’re gonna be an asshole now that I’m leaving?” He snipes, crows feet pulling at the corners of his eyes.

“When it comes to my sleep, of fucking course. I forgot what it felt like to sleep without a lawnmower next to me,”

“Yeah, that’s real funny comin’ from a chainsaw.”

Steve momentarily checks over his shoulder, and Bucky surprises him with a kiss to his jaw that almost has him knocked over. He laughs and turns until he’s skating next to Steve, side by side, holding hands to keep warm as the wind starts blowing through. “We should go catch up with everyone else.” Steve suggests, and Bucky looks over to nod once. “Okay.”

At this point, he thinks, there’s no place in the world he wouldn’t go if Steve asked him to. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do to make Steve happy. There’s nothing he wouldn’t say, wouldn’t break, wouldn’t make bleed if it brought a smile to chapped lips. It terrifies him.

They take off their skates outside the rink and return them hand-in-hand. It’s snowing quietly with the city buzzing with sound and movement, the sound of laughter and euphony of different languages swirling through the air in breathless time. Sweet lights adorn small shop windows. Bells ring along the street sides, mingling with the sound of wet, burning rubber and bursts of car honks, and the swish of wheels against slush.

Bucky gives a tender kiss to Steve’s cheek when he’s not looking as they’re waiting for cars to clear up before they cross. Steve looks over, smiles sweet, kisses Bucky’s hand and Bucky’s dying to say it—he wants to so badly an ache settles in his chest and throat; he watches the snow settle on Steve’s lashes.

“I told my mom about you, y’know.” Bucky gently tugs Steve across the street with the café only another block away.

“What’d you tell her?”

“Only the good stuff.”

“Oh yeah? Like what?”

Bucky quirks an eyebrow. “That ain’t for you to know ‘til you meet her and see what she has to say about you,”

“Oh c’mon. You can’t just tell me that and not tell me what you said,”

“The hell I can,”

“C’mon, what’d you tell her? You gush your heart out about me?”

“No,” Bucky can feel a blush rising to his cheeks. “I just told her you were decent,”

“That’s all the good stuff?” Steve’s grinning and Bucky’s exasperated with just how quickly he feels like giving in with everything that Steve is in seconds. He has great impulse control.

It’s just defective around Steve.

“I told her you’re charming—how’s that for good stuff?”

Steve shrugs and Bucky revels in the laughter in the corners of his lips.

“It’s not a bad start,”

“Punk.”

“Jerk.”

When they do meet back up with the others, pink-cheeked and cold-nosed, they squish into a booth surrounded by a wonderful warmth intertwined enough to wrap onto their bones and pulse softly. They laugh loud and unashamed; T’challa has a brooding sense of humor that melds with Sam’s witty side remarks and clashes with Clint’s outright slapstick. Natasha looks on with amusement clear in her smirk and gentle shakes of her head that has her hair cascading around her shoulders.

Steve talks softly, enough to be heard and funny when he wants to be. He looks to Bucky, who stares back speechless in everything Steve is. Articulation is lost on him when Steve starts running his fingers through his hair, undoing the bun beforehand. His hand slips down, inconspicuously between them before it settles on Bucky’s thigh and Bucky has to bite down on his tongue to save himself from squirming. The hand squeezes and moves inward, thumb running gentle circles. Bucky swallows. His hand presses Steve’s hand closer, and he slumps, struggling to keep up with the conversation and it’s only visible to Steve. He turns to face him. “Should we leave?”

“I think you can push through for a few minutes, baby,”

“I can’t, Stevie, please—”

Steve leans in against Bucky’s ear; Bucky’s just about smitten with how no one notices.

“Be good for me, and I’ll give you whatever you want when we get home,”

“Promise?”

Steve presses a kiss to Bucky’s ear. “You know I’d never go back it.”

Bucky sighs, frustrated, but kisses the corner of Steve’s mouth. Steve, in turn, runs a hand through Bucky’s hair and thumbs the skin just behind his ear; Bucky settles into the touch and struggles to find his way back into the conversation with the heat of Steve’s palm so close to his neck. He laughs, comments in the places that don’t give away how easily Steve has him wrapped around his finger. He watches the happiness on all their faces, the calm, the beauty in all them until T’challa’s saying goodbye.

“We can grab the subway back to my place.” Bucky turns as he whispers against Steve’s bearded cheek. Steve kisses his back, subtle reciprocity, and Bucky calms at the way Steve’s hands take his before kissing them. “I’m ready when you are.”

They with leave Sam and Nat and Clint, following them out shortly after.

Bucky’s slipping his hand into Steve’s, kissing his shoulder, reveling in all that Steve is to him with each step down the sidewalk. His hair glows under the Christmas lights in a makeshift halo, blue eyes darker in the off shadows and Bucky, in a fleeting moment of clarity, knows he’d run away with Steve in the blink of an eye and still too fast for the wind to catch up behind him.

Bucky runs onto the car with Steve’s hand in tow, and they’re comfortably shoved between bodies all caught up in the rush hour back home. Bucky’s pressed up against Steve’s body in a line, hands propped up on his chest with their faces mere centimeters away. Steve quirks a brow. “Hey,”

“Hey yourself,”

“Comfortable?”

Bucky kisses him. “I’m not complainin’,”

“Good, I was hoping you weren’t,”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I can do this—”

Bucky’s thrusted forward by his jean loops, their hips pressed square against one another. He can’t feel air in his lungs anymore with Steve’s lips so dastardly close. “Still comfortable?”

“Fuck you, Steve,” he rolls his eyes.

“You’ll get to, soon.”

Steve pulls a shit-eating grin and noses Bucky with crow’s feet pulling at the corners of his eyes as he does so. Bucky laughs, despite the high blush on his cheeks, and finds safety in the crook of Steve’s neck and shoulder; he closes his eyes and lets the gentle rocking of the train and Steve’s cheek against his temple lull him into soft slumber. Arms pressed against Steve’s chest, he feels safe in ways words can’t explain. He feels warm, protected in their own ignorance and complacence against the entire world with the smell of Steve’s cologne keeping him under. The cool collar of Steve’s leather jacket presses against Bucky’s cheek. He’s warm. He’s safe.

The car makes a few senseless jerks until it comes to a stop and lets off a swarm of passengers. They have time until they reach home and Bucky, Bucky doesn’t let himself move for the security he’s encased in now. Steve runs his fingers through Bucky’s hair, nudging at the scalp and letting the gaps between his fingers fill with brown hair and Bucky sighs. Quiet. “Y’know somethin’?” He asks. Steve brushes hair away from Bucky’s face as he looks at him. “What?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt this way before,”

“What about?”

“About—about you. About us. Goddamn. I was livin’ in a bubble before I met you.” Bucky smiles when Steve’s leaning forward to press their noses together and Bucky can’t seem to make himself stop. He frames Steve’s face between his hands, smiling, unsure, but all Steve does is lean forward for a kiss and Bucky’s gone. “Y’know the night I met you I was thinkin’ about quitting. Throwin’ in the towel and retiring early just to focus on somethin’ other than what I felt I was so good at,”

“But you are good at boxing,” Steve gently reminds.

“That’s not the point—the point is, Stevie, you gave me somethin’ better than being content with where I was. You gave me you, and everythin’ that came with you… and I don’t like thinking about where I’d be without you.”

Bucky’s lungs feel empty, and his hands cold, and his cheeks too warm. Steve looks, closes his lips and Bucky’s suddenly paranoid with what he’s said he doesn’t feel Steve kissing him until he opens his eyes in a flash of light; his stop is called and Steve takes his hand.

They’re laughing through the streets, smiling through the doorway, and kissing up the stairs to Bucky’s apartment where they lock the door behind them and jerk their shoes off. Steve’s lips are on Bucky’s, his hands on Bucky’s hips, chest pressed up so close Bucky can almost taste the leather of Steve’s jacket. He shoves it off, along with all dignity he had left the second they came home.

The jacket falls to the floor before Steve whips the both of them around and lifts Bucky up against the wall.  He stops and all Bucky can see are blown pupils and a thin ring of blue before everything slows and Bucky feels every touch in whimpers, everything tenfold that lets off like fireworks on his skin.

Steve lays him down in bed, swipes a lick of hair away from his face before his hand squeezes the pillow next to Bucky’s head. It’s inconceivably warm and he’s struggling to breathe when Steve’s his only oxygen, pressed so close but still far away when they find tempo and Bucky’s gasping against Steve’s cheek. His hands slip up Steve’s back, over broad muscle and smooth skin before he reaches up for a kiss and is left struggling to breathe. Steve asks if he’s okay; Bucky arches his back in automatic response and stutters out what he thinks is a “yes” before Steve kisses down his neck. He feels the sheets scrape under his skin, breathing tight and hands scrambling to hold onto something stable when all he can do is take what Steve gives.

He’s lifted until they’re face to face, where Steve maps his skin until Bucky’s face is buried in Steve’s shoulder and he’s rattling for breath and Steve’s muttering things Bucky can’t quite hear.

They lay still later; Bucky loves the way Steve’s fingers card through his hair and he feels at absolute peace. They stare out the window, together, and Bucky notices just how brightly the moon shines and paints over their skin. He climbs to his forearms. Steve cups his jaw, runs his thumb over a stubbly cheek and Bucky turns to kiss it. He loves the way the moon colors Steve’s irises, the pink plushness of his lips, the freckles scattered like constellations across snowy skin. He’s something surreal, something Bucky still has trouble believing in but something he fights for nonetheless.

“What’re you thinking about?” Steve murmurs, and Bucky smiles. “I was thinkin’ about,” he takes Steve’s hand and kisses it, “you,”

“What about me?”

“I don’t think you’re real,”

Steve grins, moves his hands to outline Bucky’s lips. “I’m just about as real as you are,”

Bucky snorts, and lightly slaps Steve’s cheek with a smirk. “Yeah, right,”

Steve chuckles and brushes hair from Bucky’s face; Bucky can feel a soft hum in Steve’s chest as he stares him down, and he turns his head to kiss Steve’s hand like he’ll slip into thin air, slip away with the soft breeze that’s coming in from the window that’s open a crack. When it gets too cold, and Bucky can’t help the tremble in his hands, he swings the covers over his back and tucks himself against Steve, arm across his chest, fingers outlining a scar.

“Did you always want to be a boxer?” Steve murmurs, so soft Bucky stills and remembers the first day in the ring. “No,” he answers truthfully, comforted by the small swipes Steve draws through his hair. “I wanted to be a doctor when I was a kid,”

“Dr. Barnes. It’s gotta nice ring to it—paging Dr. Barnes to surgery please,” he says the last part in a nasally drawl that has Bucky laughing into Steve’s shoulder and pushing his hand away with his face. “Shut up, oh my god,”

Steve only laughs enough to fill the space they take up before kissing Bucky’s forehead. “I’d trust you if you were my doctor,”

“Would you now?”

“Yeah. What’s the worse you could do?”

Bucky only rolls his eyes and tucks himself closer. Comfortable, he asks, “what about you?”

“What about me?”

“Did you always want to be an English teacher?”

Steve chuckles, pauses, and Bucky maintains his glowing gaze.

“I don’t know. I always wanted to help people, that’s all I really understood. My dad was a firefighter. And I guess I wanted to be like him, helping people and all that,”

“Did you ever feel like you did get to be like him?”

“When I joined the Army, yeah. And I thought I was doing real good. I was saving lives, keeping my team in check, making sure we all’d get home safe at the end of the day. That was before I found out the whole goddamn war was for shit. You can’t fight a physical war against an idea like terrorism, or come into a country and expect them to respect you when all you’ve done is throw their country to shit,”

Steve takes a breath and Bucky kisses his jaw. “If you couldn’t enlist, would you?”

Bucky watches Steve’s lips part, the furrow in his brow leave and his fingers ghost over Bucky’s cheek. “No,” he finally says, turning to Bucky with a soft smile. “I got to save lives. And I met you. Don’t think either one of those things would’ve happened if I hadn’t made the choices I had,”

There’s a soft smile on the edges of Bucky’s lips, and he leans forward for a kiss.

“I was thinking about you the other day, y’know,” Steve murmurs, cupping Bucky’s cheek and kissing down his face again.

“Oh yeah?” It’s unbelievable how breathless it comes out, and Bucky knows Steve knows when he smirks. “Yeah. I was wondering how I got so lucky,”

“Because my clumsy ass decided to take a freefall for the floor and you saved it,”

Steve laughs and Bucky hides his grin beneath the covers. “I knew you had a thing for it,”

“You really think I can help myself?”

Bucky gasps when he feels Steve’s hand squeeze the swell of his ass and nudges him away, trying not to laugh when Steve does. “You goddamned animal; I should’ve known,”

Steve winks and Bucky shakes his head, but he can’t help the smile on his face when he curls in just slightly and kisses Steve again, letting his hair fall from the bun that loosened earlier. “So what’re you gonna do now, if you wanna help people?”

“I like being a teacher. Making a difference, helping out the ones who can’t but not treating them like some sob story who’s saved by the white man in the end,”

“I like that. I like it a lot,”

“How about me?”

“I’m warming up,”

“And this whole time you haven’t, huh?”

“You aren’t half bad. But the sex is amazing, I thought I should let you know,”

Steve gets up and rolls on top of Bucky’s waist, two hands bracketing his head as Bucky slips a hand over over Steve’s arm as the other touches himself. “We could go a few more rounds,” he smirks.

“I won’t be done with you for a while, then,”

“I’m not complaining.”

“I know you won’t.”

 

—

 

Bucky wakes up to glass shattering across a wooden floor and frantic, hushed swearing. He bolts out of bed, instinctively reaching for Steve, only to find his impression in the bed warm and rumpled. Fresh worry sets in Bucky’s throat as he rushes to the kitchen to a suppressed shout of, “Don’t turn on the light!”

Bucky freezes, finger slowly coming down from the light switch for the kitchen. There’s a stale odor of beer and carbon in the air, and Bucky sees the faint outline of a broken beer bottle across the kitchen floor. “Stevie?” He calls, gentle and wan, toeing over the glass on the floor before stumbling into the dark. He scans the carpet, the couch, the walls, until a hand grabs his own and nearly makes him jump out of his skin. He falls to the floor in the space between one end of the couch and the wall that supports the window. Bucky looks to Steve, who’s wide eyed and trembling with his knees pressed to his chest and his arms across his shins. “They’ll hear us,”

“Who will, Steve?”

“The two units down the hall. You gotta be quiet, Buck.”

Bucky pauses. He looks at Steve, tries to outline what he can in the dark and shuffles in front to face him. Steve looks incredulous. “What are you doing?”

“What year is it, Steve?”

“2004.” Seamless.

“Where are we?”

“Karokh. Why are you asking me this?”

Bucky shakes his head and wraps a sore hand around Steve’s ankle, gently outlining circles onto his skin with his thumb. “Who am I, Steve?”

“You’re Bucky. You’re—” Steve’s mouth stops moving. His body freezes, and Bucky can feel the cruel tension underneath his skin all gnarled and stiff as Steve stares over Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky can’t read him and his heart trembles so in between his ribs as he waits. He waits. It’s so quiet Bucky can hear the shifting phases of the dishwasher and the hushed hiss of warm air. He doesn’t take his eyes off of Steve, watching, waiting, his thumb tireless with each stroke to Steve’s ankle.

He can’t feel the minutes tick by until Steve moves.

He watches as Steve’s body loosens. Legs shift criss-crossed, hands tremble and fall limp into a boneless lap and stunning eyes fall to cold knuckles and small nails. Bucky brings his hand forward to Steve’s cheek. Steve’s jaw sets and Bucky stops midway and sets his hand back. “You’re here with me, Stevie,” he tries with uncertainty, to no avail as Steve remains bone-still.

So he tries again, and again, until his voice is strong enough to hang in the air longer and his hands are open in front of Steve for him to take. Bucky curls them in soft time to keep them from falling asleep as he waits, silent and terrified until Steve takes his hands. Bucky exhales sharply and feels the tremor in his throat before he scoots forward, arms maneuvering Steve’s legs on top of his own. Steve’s shaking, trembling, on the verge of tears, and all Bucky can do is take him between his arms and press his face against his neck. He squeezes tight, as if all the air in his lungs and all the blood in his veins were created only to give Steve love.

Steve’s crying, he finds, and all Bucky can do is press his lips to blond hair and let his hands hold and cradle. He kisses sweat-ridden skin, lets the salt linger on his tongue. He knows this body than he does his own, all freckles and scars, amongst the things he worships, kisses like they’re holy. He doesn’t realize how long they’ve stayed there until the last of the stars in the sky fade away.

“Let’s go to bed.” Bucky whispers, because there’s nothing left to be said. He doesn’t want to talk about the episode. He doesn’t want to talk about the clouds that gave way to clarity when he reasoned with Steve; the panic in his voice had made Bucky’s skin crawl and go too white. Steve’s stopped crying by then, nodding, pliant in Bucky’s arms when he’s guided to his feet and to the bedroom.

He cleans the beer in the kitchen.

Under the covers, Bucky’ll find Steve facing away, curled inward, still trembling. He traces patterns in Steve’s back, ones he can’t memorize, until he falls asleep with his forehead pressed to Steve’s shoulder blades and his fist loosely curled under his chin.

He wakes up with Steve gone. He throws the covers off and jerks out of bed towards the hallway, towards the kitchen, where he sees Steve just about to open the door to make his escape. “Wait,” he croaks, and Steve drops his hand away from the door. He pockets it instead, turns to face Bucky who’s standing in front of him in seconds, foreheads pressed. He hates how fragile he feels when he needs to be strong, in more ways than through his hands. “I want you to stay,”

“You know I can’t,”

“We don’t even have to talk about last night,”

“There’s nothing to talk about.” And Bucky isn’t ready for the way Steve squeezes the inside of his elbow to push him away. Bucky’s hand flies to Steve’s knuckles and holds them right back, brow set and jaw clenching down to keep him still. His hand relaxes, and he rubs his fingers over rough knuckles. “I won’t keep you.”

That’s how Bucky finds himself carding his fingers through Steve’s hair, his elbow perched on the table between them and Steve looking down at his creme swirl of coffee. “I thought I was back there,”

“Steve, you don’t have to—”

“But I need to.” he affirms in a voice that makes Bucky’s hand still and retract. He swallows, takes his mug between his hands.

“I denied living with PTSD for months after I came back, until I realized there was something real fucked up going on in my head. I needed to do something about it because some days I couldn’t leave the house. I wanted to get my life on, and I couldn’t leave my fucking bedroom without hearing some ambulance go off and scare me shitless,”

Bucky notes the steel in Steve’s voice, an agitating contrast to last night and the night at Steve’s with the medals.

“So I put myself in the VA’s office and asked for help. They got me meds, therapy; I stopped having episodes after a year. I went to school and got my degrees and… you know the rest.”

Bucky takes Steve’s hands, kisses them, rubs them between his own and presses them against his cheek. “Then what happened last night, Stevie?”

Steve withdraws his hands, shrinks in, makes himself too small for Bucky to hold and too small for Bucky to pull him back in again. “I had an episode,”

“Did the meds stop working?”

“I’d stopped taking them a few weeks ago,”

“Why?”

“Because I was afraid that meeting you was just something my head I came up with. I didn’t think you were real.” He stops.

The legs of Bucky’s chair scrape against the floor in a screeching rush when he jerks forward and takes Steve’s head between his hands. “I need you to look at me,” he pleads, voice firm but still waiting to shake. When Steve looks up Bucky kisses him, runs his fingers through his hair, leaves himself breathless with their noses pressed together by the sides. “I’m real. I promise,” he whispers. Steve looks back down, and Bucky kisses him again. “I’m real, and I’m here with you. I’m here, baby, I’m here.”

Steve stays pressed close and Bucky does what he can through touch, through whispers, through kisses meant for something more than comfort. “I need you to promise me you’ll go back on your meds,” Bucky murmurs, hands still interlocked with Steve’s and the coffee left cold. Steve nods, brisk and once. “I promise,”

Bucky kisses his hands. “I can drive you home, if you want,”

“I’ll be okay,”

“Okay,”

“…Will you kick ass for me in Boston?”

“You know that’s the only thing I’m good at,”

“No, it’s not,” Steve brushes a strand of brown hair behind Bucky’s ear. “I wouldn’t be here if it were.”

 

—

 

Bucky lands a sucker punch and wipes away at the spit on his lip that intermingles with the blood a bit too long. He can barely hold himself up with the way his legs are shaking; he gives a roar, ducks, and lands a swipe to the ear before the countdown starts and he leans against the rungs. His hair falls heavy in his face, sticking to the sweat, the light bearing down so strongly he squints and grits his teeth against it.

The bell rings. His arm’s swung up and he spits to the floor again. His breath comes in goes in waves that slam the shore and break the dwindling rocks that veer too close.

In the locker rooms he gives the usual interviews, always with a smirk on his face and wink easy on his right eye. Wanda, his agent, walks in when it’s all done and gone and perches on the shower bench while Bucky showers. “Your stats have gone up since the fight in Hell’s Kitchen,”

“Oh yeah?”

“Mhm. People are tweeting about you right now. You’re trending on Twitter and ESPN, if you can believe it,”

Bucky pokes his head out from behind the shower curtain, hair slicked back and away from his face and looking terribly confused. Wanda laughs, throws her hair over a shoulder with one stiletto balancing on her toes. “Apparently your “Winter Soldier stare” is now a meme,”

“The hell is a meme?”

Wanda sighs and shakes her head. “I feel like we might need to start working on your pop culture knowledge.”

Bucky scoffs from behind the shower curtains. “No we don’t,”

“Yes you do, especially if you want more people to like you,”

“People do like me…”

“I’m not just talking about your boyfriend—speaking of, have you told Fury about him?”

There’s a loud clatter of a shampoo bottle on the tiled shower floor and hushed swearing that follows the scramble to save the bar of soap sliding around. Wanda jumps, startled, and sighs when Bucky opens the shower curtain, finished. “No,” he mutters, looking at his hands as he comes out and changes in front of his locker, out of sight. “I don’t want him to know,”

“Why?”

“You know how he is. He’s old-fashioned,”

“His boxing style, maybe. Not the way he understands relationships,”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

Bucky sighs, disgruntled, and dries his hair on his way to the towel dispenser. His clothes stick to his skin, and he shakes off a shiver when he puts his coat and scarf and beanie on. Wanda smiles and tucks in his scarf. “Let’s go get some rest. We’re driving back early in the morning,”

“How early?”

“Eight. So we can be home by twelve and you can have time to hang out with your boyfriend.”

Bucky rolls his eyes but the smile on his face gives him away. Wanda gives him a hug, a rub on his back, and follows him out the door when she bundles herself all up to brace the Bostonian cold. It’s snowing down in sheets, turning the streets so white Bucky can’t see his hand in front of his own face or Wanda’s crimson nail polish. But it’s all so beautiful, so kissed by the soft amber glow of streetlights. “Think we’ll still be home by twelve tomorrow?”

“Definitely not.”

Back at the hotel, having brushed his teeth and collapsing onto the bed with phone in hand, he returns a missed call from Steve as his body sinks into the hotel mattress. “Hello?” comes a honeyed voice laced with fatigue but a smile present nonetheless.

“‘S me, Stevie,”

“Hey, babe. I saw you tonight,”

“Oh yeah? How’d I do, sweetheart?”

Steve’s trying not to laugh on the other end and Bucky can tell.

“I felt like you were slacking in your second round,”

“That right? Maybe I’ll take you out for a few rounds when I get back home, show you a few things,”

“I’ll be looking forward to that, y’know,”

“Why?”

“You’ll be all sweaty and hot and up close,”

“You perverted fuck,”

Steve laughs and Bucky finds himself pressing as closely as he physically can to his phone, like somehow, some way, he’ll be closer to Steve if he keeps pushing up against the screen. “How’re you feelin’?”

“Better, thanks. I did want to ask you something, though,”

“Yeah, ‘course,” Bucky stills. “What is it?”

“I know it’s kind of a long commitment, but I wanted to know if you could come to graduation,”

“Of course, baby, you didn’t even have to ask. When?”

“May 20th,”

“Done. I’ll be there,”

“Thanks, Buck. It means a lot,”

“I’m gonna be the loudest one there for you, y’know,”

“Please don’t be,”

And Bucky chuckles, rolls over in bed under the covers and brushes away hair from his face. “I miss you,” he murmurs, folding a corner of his pillow between his fingers.

“I miss you too. When are you coming home?”

“The plan’s for tomorrow around twelve. But it’s snowing, so I might be late,”

“I’ll be at your place,”

“Home, huh,”

“Yeah, home. Dinner’ll be ready when you get here,”

“You’re a real housewife, baby,”

“Please. I’m ordering takeout,”

“What kind?”

“Your choice,”

“Can we do Indian?”

“Definitely.”

 

—

 

Steve’s home when Bucky stumbles in; it’s 6PM and he’d left Boston at 12:30 and all he wants is sleep and Steve. There are flowers on the kitchen table, carnations and roses in separate bundles, the smell of Indian red curry meddling with a cheap red wine that tastes like knock off Marsala.

Bucky drops his things like a rock, suitcase and hat and scarf and coat. He stumbles out of his boots, his gloves leaving a trail behind him and loose hair framing his face; owlish, cerulean eyes hone in on Steve when he gets up off the couch and greets Bucky with a kiss Bucky doesn’t realize how much he’s missed until he’s naked and pressed into the couch, sighing and relaxing.

Steve whips out a cigarette, and Bucky reaches out for them to share it. He pulls a blanket over their bodies, curl in, Steve occasionally stretching over Bucky’s body to tap out the cigarette in the ash tray. He eventually dumps it, and Bucky hides his face against Steve’s neck while gentle fingers run through his hair. “I missed coming home to you,” he murmurs, eyes closed. “I didn’t know I would until I got back to the hotel to find it empty,”

Steve brushes his chin against Bucky’s hair. “I missed having you come home.”

Bucky breathes out in gentle laughter, tracing foreign patterns to Steve’s skin once he opens his eyes. He shivers with Steve’s nails grazing over his shoulder blades. “I wanted to ask you somethin’,”

“Yeah?”

“Are you doing anything on Christmas?”

“I’m gonna be at a family party on Christmas Eve, but nothing on Christmas Day. Why?”

“I wanted to know if you wanted to go to the midnight Christmas mass at St. Patrick’s with me,”

“You don’t seem like the religious type,”

“I’m not anymore, it’s just a family thing we used to do every year,”

Steve brushes a thumb over Bucky’s cheek and he swears he falls in love with the way Steve does it. He looks up, retracing old patterns, and all Steve does is smile. “Yeah. ‘Course,”

“Dress nice,”

“Baby, I think I know how to dress nice,”

Bucky snorts. “You call your grandpa sweaters nice?”

“They’re comfortable, and that’s all that matters,”

“Don’t mean they’re nice,”

Steve rolls his eyes, and Bucky only curls closer, kisses one of Steve’s hands. Steve moves his hand to Bucky’s cheek and thumbs over skin. A solemn look falls over his face. Bucky shifts closer. He presses a soft flurry of kisses around Steve’s jaw and neck, noses there, and kisses Steve’s lips once he can push himself close enough. He sighs, feels Steve’s calloused hands all around his back, sighing when they’re turned over and Steve’s brushing his hair away from his face. Bucky watches Steve as his hand moves from his hair to his cheeks, to his eyes; they don’t break eye contact and Bucky can’t stand the affection that Steve looks at him with.

“Why aren’t you religious anymore?” Steve murmurs. Bucky shifts, opens his mouth to find nothing ready to come out on the tip of his tongue, and all he can do is stare up at the angel looking down on him. He wraps a loose hand around Steve’s bicep and strokes over the impossible bulk of muscle. “Remember all those sex scandals with the altar boys?”

Steve nods.

“I figured there couldn’t be some kinda God that would let that shit happen and let the fathers get away with it, too. I’d been thinkin’ about there being no God awhile, before all that, nothin’ too crazy that would make Ma lose her shit if she found out,”

Bucky closes his eyes when Steve pushes his hair back, opening them only once Steve does it again. “But once that shit came out? I was angry enough to let it all go. Didn’t care if God was gonna punish me for not believing in him anymore. I figured if he was more concerned about that than those boys, or all the other shit in the world, he’s not the sorta God I’d want to believe in.”

Bucky watches as Steve continues to stroke down along the edges of his face. “Did you ever tell her you stopped believing?”

“Didn’t need to. She always had this sixth sense for knowin’ things without you telling her. It was probably when I moved out and she stopped seeing me at church on Sundays. She made nothin’ of it,”

“You still talk to her?”

“‘Course. She’s my mom, I still gotta take care of her. Do you not talk to yours?”

“Do I really seem like the kind not to?”

Bucky shakes his head, laughs. “I think you take real good care of her,”

“I’ve got no siblings. Might as well,”

Bucky straightens himself up and jerks his forearms behind him to prop his body up. “She the religious type?”

“Yeah. I swear, there’s nothing she’s afraid of but God; expected me to be the same way, too. When I was a kid, we’d go to St. Patrick’s every Sunday and I’d stay afterwards for Sunday school,”

“Seriously? St. Patrick’s?”

“Yeah. When you brought it up earlier it reminded me. We could’ve seen each other when we were kids, if you were at the Sunday services,”

“I was, yeah. Where’d you sit?”

“Way up front,”

“We were back, on the left side,” Bucky laughs and kisses Steve, somehow so overwhelmed with an elation he can’t pinpoint and because of something so simple, yet so beautiful as to having their childhoods intertwined. Steve kisses back, and Bucky can taste the cigarette in his mouth before he’s laid back down to rest. He keeps a hand on Steve’s chest, guiding it up, up, up against his cheek before he smooths over his beard and under his eyes. He lets go. “Looks like you were chosen for me from the beginnin’, huh?”

“That’s real cute,”

“Shut up,” Bucky rolls his eyes but the blush on his cheeks gives him away before he can do much about it. Steve smirks and kisses him again, holding their foreheads together by the cheek once his lips fall too short. Bucky wants to say something but opts not to; there’s nothing he thinks he can say without taking this all away. He feels Steve’s skin on his, soothing against the ache in his muscles and the pain of loneliness and the simple, subtle grief in his bones. He pulls the blanket further up their bodies.

“Can we move to the bed?”

Steve nods, kisses his cheek, and stands. Bucky can see goosebumps across every subtle dip and rise in muscle, in the dimples at the base Steve’s spine, prominent against pale skin. He notices scars, deep and shallow, all gruesome and rigid against what beautiful porcelain around them. He starts to get up before Steve lifts him, his arms under Bucky’s knees and back and Bucky’s protesting and laughing all at once before Steve unceremoniously dumps him onto the bed. He bounces, still high off laughter when Steve follows and they chase each other under the cold covers and come up red-cheeked and sore.

Bucky’s leaning against Steve’s chest. His fingers find a scar, stay there, trace. Before he can ask what happened Steve answers for him: “Shrapnel from a roadside IED.”

Bucky wonders how bad it had to have been to cross above Steve’s left nipple and over onto his side in a screaming pink, perverted crescent that’s left the skin almost dented inwards.

“Happened on my rescue mission out of the Taliban camp. We were coming right off the mountain before the IED went off and almost blew us over the side. At some point I didn’t think any of us would make it out alive,” he murmurs, and Bucky has to rock forward once to hear just a bit clearer, and to swipe his fingers through the hair on the side of Steve’s hair. He rubs their noses together, eyes half-closed, and he can feel Steve’s lips part after he kisses him and pulls back, quietly.

Steve’s taken on a faraway look in his eyes, now that they’re concentrated on the ceiling. Bucky can feels his fingers run across his back, over shoulder blade and spine; Steve sighs, and Bucky smiles when he looks down at him and kisses his forehead. He pulls the blankets further over them, and Steve starts talking up towards the slanted city lights on the ceiling. “When I was at the camp, after they’d caught me getting our men out, they took me into this dark holding room and chained me to the wall. I couldn’t see three feet in front of me and it was so goddamn cold. I couldn’t bust the lock on my wrists open or move enough to keep myself warm.

“They’d come in a few times a day for interrogations or torture; it depended on how they were feeling. First day I fought back and they waterboarded me. Other days it was whipping my back and throwing salt water on it right after, or taking a razor to my chest and carving it out seventy, eighty times, going slow until all I could do was wait for the next cut and pretend I was back home.

“They’d speak in English sometimes. When I wasn’t being held or tortured I’d do menial tasks—cleaning, cooking, washing, teaching English. I learned basic Dari in five months and eventually found out why there were women and kids at the camp in the middle of this fucking war.”

Bucky knows exactly why and he feels like throwing up. Steve stops. Swallows. Closes his eyes and Bucky’s immobile.

“There was this one kid there, Ehsan, who’d sneak me food and water and we’d talk sometimes. He asked about America, about wanting to make a life here for himself once the war was over. Some part of him knew he wouldn’t, but that didn’t stop him from talking about it every day whenever he was around,”

“What happened to him?”

Steve looks back down at Bucky, lips closed and hand still running over soft skin. “I don’t know. I was kept there for a year, until we could finally get enough men to come get us. Ehsan was taken back to his family and I never saw him again after that. I don’t know where he is.” There are tears pooling in Steve’s eyes and Bucky shifts up to kiss them away and hold the love of his life in his arms. He holds Steve quietly; nothing needed to be said in the softness of their sheets and the steady hum of the heater through the walls. Bucky feels the way Steve sinks against his skin, curled inward, hiding away in safety and warmth.

He thinks back to the photograph in Steve’s shoebox, of him hugging a boy no taller past his hip. He strokes Steve’s hair, presses his lips to his forehead and provides what his touch can and his words can’t. “He’s okay,” Bucky shifts, “he’s okay.”

“And if he’s not?”

“He will be.”

Bucky knows Steve doesn’t believe him from the way he feels him turn slightly in his arms. But he stills, doesn’t say anymore, until Bucky realizes he’s fallen asleep with his face pressed to Bucky’s neck. Bucky kisses his forehead and wraps himself close. “I love you,” he reminds, softly, before moving his arm behind Steve’s neck and falling asleep.

He wakes up to coffee on the nightstand and lips to his own, wishing him a sweet good morning.

 

—

 

Bucky thinks the peacoat on top of the suit is a bit much, now that he looks at it, but he knows his mother would rather catch him dead then not properly dressed for church. He hasn’t gone in years. It’s only fitting to have Steve come with him on his first time back in thirteen years, when he finally left on discovering the pastor faced major accusations of child abuse. He doesn’t work there anymore.

Steve comes from behind Bucky, runs his fingers through Bucky’s hair towards the back of his head before kissing there. “I like the haircut,” he mentions.

Bucky’s hair only barely reaches his jaw now. “You don’t think it’s too short?”

“No. There’s still some for me to hold on to.”

Bucky elbows what feels like a rib and their giggling settles in due time.

They stand in front of the full body mirror. Steve’s got his arms wrapped around Bucky’s body, his cheek grazing Bucky’s temple just enough for Bucky to pick up a bergamot musk and lavender sweetness.

They look at each other, in the mirror, veiny hands overlapping and skin spreading a mutual warmth, breathing almost in sync. Steve runs a hand over Bucky’s bruises on his hand, kissing his cheek, holding him tighter in a way that makes Bucky’s heart stick in his throat and beat hard enough to make him ache more than any good fight would.

He turns, cups Steve’s jaw in his hands before he kisses him and brushes their noses together. “I’m havin’ second thoughts on leaving when we can just stay in,” he admits, and Steve chuckles with a thumb that runs over Bucky’s cheek. “C’mon, babe. We can’t be late for church.”

Bucky wrinkles his nose and Steve kisses it instead, and Bucky opts for taking Steve’s hand after they tuck each others scarves in and make sure beanies cover ears.

“You got the spare keys?”

“Yeah. After getting locked out in the middle—”

“It was _one_ time!”

“It was one time too much and I—don’t suck your teeth at me.”

It’s snowing when they go outside, and bitterly cold as Bucky hunkers down in on himself and hides from the wind. Steve hooks an arm through Bucky’s and pulls him closer for warmth. He kisses Bucky’s cheek through the turtle-like reclusion Bucky’s taken on. They don’t say much, aside from brief passings of assurances. Bucky glances at Steve from the corner of his eye, watches stoic beauty move and float with nothing less than angelic grace and Bucky wonders what the hell he’s doing here in the first place next to someone half-real half-something-dropped-from-some-heaven.

Steve stops quickly enough for Bucky to almost fall flat on ice. “What are you—” he’s cut short when Steve pulls his scarf down from in front of his face and waves to a pair coming towards them. Bucky squints, sees nothing until two students have the streetlight marked across their faces. They’re young, still marked with bright lights in their eyes and Bucky knows it’s safe to assume they’re Steve’s students.

“Hey, hi!” They exclaim, and Bucky can feel when Steve squeezes his arm in assurance. So he tries to keep up appearances and smiles when Steve does. He converses where he must, lets Steve do the talking and wishing of a Merry Christmas.

“Are you Bucky?” One of them asks and Bucky’s shocked back to reality all over again. He assumes the look on his face gives him away, because the students nearly start jumping up and down in excitement enough.

“We’ve heard so much about you!”

“Whenever we ask Steve about you he gets this dopey look on his face,”

Bucky perks at that, grins. “Oh yeah?” He asks, although it’s more directed at a now blushy Steve. “What else have you told them that you haven’t told me, baby?”

The students giggle, pick up where they left off. “He says he couldn’t be happier, that he’s the luckiest man in the world—even if you do snore,”

Bucky snorts at that and rolls his eyes. “God, he’s worse.”

They talk some more, until Steve looks at the time and Bucky smiles at him and they leave towards the cathedral.

“You’re the luckiest man in the world, huh,” Bucky slips when they’re in line to get in. Steve looks at him, candles and warm light glinting and reflecting in the pale blue of his eyes and Bucky wants everything to stop at this moment. He feels Steve’s hand brush over his cheek before he kisses his temple and strokes his hair. “I am.” He murmurs to the space between their lips and Bucky doesn’t need him to say anything more to tuck himself flush against Steve’s warmth. He doesn’t think about the stares behind him, about the glances that veer too cruel to be curious, about any camera flash or peeking eye that would write this moment down for all to see. He doesn’t care. He breathes in Steve’s cologne and nuzzles; he feels one of Steve’s hands bracing his neck and the other pressed flush against his hip.

The line inside moves forward. Bucky gives a short growl when disrupted from his warmth and comfort and Steve chuckles. Bucky takes his hand and they duck inside; there are open seats on the far left side of the nave, next to a pillar that arches out towards the rest. Bucky sits next to it, keeps his things on until the doors close and the organ erupts in song. He doesn’t remember why they’re here, but he looks to Steve and takes his hand and realizes the best explanation is none at all.

They sit through the first service in silence, communicating in soft murmurs and sung hymns and tapering touches. Bucky looks to the hallway that points towards the confession booths; Steve’s up and Bucky’s following in less than a heartbeat away. His hair streaks across his eyes when he looks back at the overflowing beacon of light, hand warm in Steve’s, feet moving gently across the floor as if it were a ring and he’s outpacing his opponent. But there’s no outpacing this. They open a booth, one on either side, and Bucky waits with his breath in his throat when he sees Steve’s face appear on the other side of the dotted screen between them. Steve looks at him, and Bucky can see gaps in his smile and his warmth still fading.

“You ever been in one of these?” Bucky asks, hushed, leaning back against the crooked cushion and wooden plank that keeps it in place.

“Nope,”

“Good to know we’ve got another first time together,”

“You’re awful sentimental, y’know,”

“Shut up. You’re supposed to confess to make me feel less worse about myself, jerk,”

Steve snorts out a laugh and Bucky joins in on it. “Any confessions you gotta get off your chest?” Bucky crosses his arms as he leans, keeping in his character as he faces forward; he notes how Steve does the same.

“Yeah, I got one,” Steve’s voice is quieter than Bucky expects. He shuffles sideways, head leaning against the screen.

“There’s this person in my life, y’know. Tall, handsome, a great cook, a god-awful snorer,”

Bucky scoffs.

But he hears a pause in Steve’s voice, and it hangs far too heavy for the candlelight to move through. “But I love him. I love the way he smiles and the way he kisses and the way he makes this face when he’s thinking. I love the way he laughs. I love everything about him and I don’t like thinking about where I’d be without him either.”

Bucky slowly pries the confession door open, in a haze until he gets to Steve’s side and drops to his knees with his lips on Steve’s and hands pressed to his cheeks. He kisses Steve like he’s the word of God and Bucky’s lost his ways in life and he doesn’t realize how quickly time passes until Steve brushes his cheeks with his thumbs. He lets go, and he finds he’s laughing because Steve for once, in all the years he’s known one person he hasn’t felt this, whatever the hell it is. “I love you too, Steve. Just can’t believe we had to get into a confession booth for you to say so,”

“Shut up,” the corners of Steve’s eyes crinkle and Bucky runs his thumbs over each wrinkle before kissing him again, gentle, soft. Steve threads his fingers through Bucky’s hair and Bucky falls in love all over again; he sighs against Steve’s lips and lets go to press their foreheads together. “I love you, I do.”

And they walk home, hand in hand, with Bucky’s arm pressed flush against Steve’s and their pace in near perfect time; Steve swipes a thumb across the stained corner of Bucky’s mouth after they stop by a hot chocolate street vendor. Bucky blushes and swats his hand away when Steve begins to coo and coddle him and the snow is unbelievably bright in his eyes. “I love you,” he reminds, and Steve kisses him to make it certain.

They stumble up the stairs to Bucky’s apartment. Steve’s got his hands on Bucky’s waist, thumbs pressing into his stomach and Bucky’s struggling to keep up with kissing him. He fumbles with the keys, having turned away to open the door but Steve’s lips finding his neck quickly enough to make it all too much harder than it’s supposed to be. He pushes the door open. Kissing Steve is the next thing on his mind; he pulls him to the bedroom, where Zemo is unceremoniously kicked out and Bucky rushes to take his jacket off as Steve kicks off his shoes. Bucky falls onto Steve’s lap, popping buttons, kissing Steve in brief intervals until all he feels is bare skin and warmth beneath his hands. Steve presses cold hands against the small of Bucky’s back, pushing him forward, lips kissing and teeth nipping and eyes hyperconcentrated on Bucky’s closed ones.

They slow once Bucky gets his shirt off. Steve works briefly, carefully, kissing old bruises and cradling new ones, fingers digging into Bucky’s thighs and all Bucky does is let his head loll back, fingers loose around Steve’s nape and his hips move forward without him knowing. He opens his eyes, feels the sheets on his back and Steve’s dog tags against his mouth. He pulls on them.

Steve’s pulsating in a rhythm the bed drags with and Bucky swears and moans. Steve brushes hair from Bucky’s mouth, kisses him, his hand splayed across Bucky’s forehead until Bucky pulls back to breathe and arch in place. He knows this is one of the many faces of love, and he takes it all in, struggles to keep his eyes open to focus on his beacon of light and love. He feels Steve smile on his lips, feels the cradling of his jaw, feels the overwhelming warmth across his hips and torso and wherever Steve’s skin touches his. He gasps, heaves for breath, until Steve slows even further and dips his lips against Bucky’s ear. Bucky’s hands slip to grip Steve’s forearms, his head turning to press his mouth onto Steve’s skin.

“I love you—” Steve rasps, and Bucky pulls a smile when his nails dig into skin and his eyes squeeze shut.

He sees stars, crying out with his cheek pressed to Steve’s and Steve’s head bowed minutes later, laboring breaths running in and out of his chest. They’re both shaking hard enough to bring the bed down.

“Sh, sh, ‘s okay, baby,” Steve coos, running his hand across Bucky’s face to nudge away sweaty strands that clung to his face. Bucky presses a hand to the hand on his cheek when it stills. They nose, gently, Bucky’s eyes slipping to a close; he feels Steve move back and, after a pause, kiss his forehead and draw him into warmth and security and safety. They nose again, kiss, fall asleep, wake up to sunlight pouring in and Steve’s blond hair falling into Bucky’s face when he’s kissed again.

“I just want a life with you.” He doesn’t know which one of them says it, whose lips moved first but the answer is the same regardless:

“You have one.”

 

—

 

“Goddamn it, boy, you can’t keep it up like this!” Fury’s shouting so loudly Bucky can barely hear him over his own breathing. He brings his forearms up, blocking each earth-shattering strike, stepping off in one second to swing a hook the second the bell goes off. Bucky stumbles to his corner, collapses back onto the stool and feels the cold swish of water through his mouth and patchy towel across his forehead. The ring shivers where Fury lands next to him. “I need you to get him off his feet,”

“I’m tryin’,”

“You fuckin’ know it ain’t hard enough. Watch and deck him so fuckin’ hard his goddamn mouth guard falls out,”

Bucky nods.

“Hit ‘em where it hurts, tiger.” Fury slaps a pec and Bucky’s brow twitches in a leeway. He closes his eyes. He takes a breath. He sees Steve in his head with Zemo perched in his lap. Steve’s wearing glasses and correcting papers on the couch armrest.

Bucky opens his eyes and gets up towards the middle of the ring, eyes glaring right over the tops of his gloves. The opposition, 5’10”, built with lean muscles made of brick and so goddamn fast Bucky’s having trouble figuring out where he stands at any given moment. He thought the name “Ant Man” was an understatement.

This is their fourth round. The longest for both of them this season.

But now Bucky watches and all time comes to a still. He watches the step forward, back, then forward in a scuttle to reach for the jab. He swings out of it and counters with a double-jab to the face that’s followed through with a hook and cross punch. He watches as Lang stumbles back, still not off his feet. But he advances, corners, and lets down a beautiful mess of jabs and hooks and uppercuts until the ref yanks him back to the center of the ring. He resets and goes at it again and again and again until the bell rings and there’s a clear winner. Bucky just has to brace for the way his arm is swung up and the lights bombard the ring.

The same routine follows: meet, interviews, shower, change, departure for home. He calls Steve and gets no answer; figures he must be busy and still running around to organize everything after New Year’s.

Bucky’d met Mrs. Rogers the night after Christmas Day. He now knows where Steve gets his unwavering, firm kindness and sly mouth from; there’s a picture of Steve’s late father on the mantlepiece to remind Bucky where Steve had gotten his strength and dignity. They had dinner, talked, laughed, made better acquaintances and when Bucky was leaving he’d gotten a gentle kiss on his cheek from Sarah and a reminder to keep her boy safe. He’d promised. She’d smiled and patted his cheek and wished them adieu.

It’s February 10th today.

Bucky calls Steve again and is faced with the answering machine again. Now his hands shake and his heart trembles, slightly, as he messes with the keys to get inside his apartment with the heater on blast to combat the below freezing cold outside.

Bucky’s relieved to find Steve at the kitchen table. He sees a newspaper. It’s stark white, probably hot off the press from _The New York Times_ , giving off a glare so white everything else around it can’t be seen until Steve shifts back and sighs so wearily Bucky swears everything around him wilts. He looks at the opened page of the _Times_ , sees his sallow face from the drug trial years ago against a grainy, unfiltered picture of him and Steve kissing on the subway.

Steve turns, arms crossed and eyes puffy; it’s only then Bucky sees other newspapers, tabloids, clippings—all a mess but all pointing straight through what Bucky’s kept away like it wouldn’t come up after dying. His duffel bag drops to the floor and he walks towards Steve, feet still against the tiles and Zemo pressing up against his shins when he sits. He looks down and for once his hair isn’t long enough to cover his eyes and the thoughts ricocheting around his skull. He places a shaky hand on the table, over the past issue of the _Chicago Tribune_ , with bold letters shouting out an old trial date: 14 July 2010. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

Steve looks up, weary, moving his hand until the knuckles are pressed against the side of his mouth and he sighs. “I just can’t figure out why you couldn’t trust me.”

There are just about a million reasons Bucky can come up with but none of them reach his voice enough for him to say something. “I didn’t know how to bring it up—”

“And you’d rather reporters do it for you?”

“What reporters? What are you talkin’ about?”

“There were reporters crowding all outside when I came in,”

“Why are you asking me like I know anythin’ about it?”

“Dunno, I just feel like there’s a lot you haven’t been honest with me about,”

Bucky shakes his head, one set of knuckles going white with how tightly they’re holding his others. “I have nothing to lie to you about,”

“Then what do you have to say about all of this?”

“What do you _want_ me to say?” Bucky snaps, blood running so hot he feels it in his cheeks and palms and chest and it’s uncontrollable. It’s the monster he thought he’d buried. It’s the monster he thought he put down the moment he left the white and blue rehab center rooms and discolored pills.

“What do you want me to say, Steve? That my last coach shot me up with steroids before each and every fight? That he got me addicted to the point where withdrawals would leave me so fucking sick I had to be hospitalized? And after losing champs in Chicago what the hell do you think he did to me when I was puking my own goddamn guts out in the hotel bathroom? He fucking turned me in to the police and left me for dead. The only way I could avoid going to jail was to get into rehab and when I finally got my ass out I was so depressed I was this fucking close to getting rid of myself right then and there so don’t you fucking _dare_ talk to me about not trusting you when I don’t even have the balls enough to—”

He’s in a hysteria so deep he doesn’t notice Steve bracing his cheeks. He doesn’t notice the sobbing in his chest, the shaking in his hands, the collapse of the monster. He’s pressed into Steve’s shoulder, one hand on the back of his neck, the other across his shoulder blades. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry—” it’s on a perverted repeat. The only way it stops is when Steve kisses his cheek and holds him tighter and begs him to stop apologizing. Bucky clenches to Steve’s jacket sleeve and just sobs harder.

He sobs until he’s hacking up breath and until his eyes run so dry they tear up and burn and he cries all over again. Steve hardly moves. But Bucky doesn’t notice falling into bed, body shaking and chest caved in until warmth presses up against him and keeps him safe. He clings to it, grips hard enough to bruise, and hides away from noise and light until the morning light dares peek into the room. Steve’s sitting on the bed, one hand combing through Bucky’s hair and face and under puffy eyes for what feels like forever. He hears something along the lines of, “I’m sorry.”

They watch each other. Steve gets up. Reveals the Advil and glass of water and spare keys on the nightstand. Bucky purses his lips and closes his eyes. Steve kisses his forehead and Bucky hears a tear, unsteady footsteps, the shaky closing of the front door. He curls in on his body and sleeps through the morning. The afternoon shoves him out of bed and asks Natasha over, who gives him and the papers on the kitchen table a once over before putting on a movie and letting him cry on her shoulder.

 

—

 

Ever since Steve left he’s been more aggressive in his fights. More brutal. Relentless to the point of rising suspicions about recurring drug usage. But he goes home and can’t find anything strong enough to drown himself in, nothing strong enough to make it all blur and puke out. So he wallows instead.

When he looks at his book drafts, he realizes Steve’d helped him out so much with his book Bucky might as well make him the co-writer. But looking back at the parts he added, at the parts they wrote together, he realizes changing anything would screw everything up and it would all fall apart. And they were just about done. Now there are more blank pages than well-articulated words, and Bucky doesn’t know how to piece it all together, like he’d used to, like he’d used to before Steve but anything before Steve was something less than life and less than motion and less than their clumsy traipsing through shared kitchens and heavy laughter.

He’s due to face Brock. There are no missed phone calls or texts he’s seen, only news report after news report after business on Twitter he’s supposed to be following, like Wanda says he should. He reads everything and is doubtful anything would make him feel worse than the spare keys collecting dust on his nightstand, or the navy blue Brooklyn College hoodie abandoned in his dresser. Top drawer. Still folded, still worn. Still laced with the cologne Bucky’d bought for Christmas. Still draped over his torso when some days overpower his will to get out the house.

He gets up to change the music on his Pandora radio station before someone knocks on the door. He answers it, blindly, just like he always does. He opens the door to Steve.

To Steve, covered in snow and holding his hands together to keep them from trembling. Bucky purses his lips and moves to close the door when Steve gives a bereft plea to wait. The door stops moving and Bucky sighs, half-heartedly beckoning him in. Steve refuses, swallows, and Bucky’s struck with how he hasn’t seen Steve like this. He stands at the door and something in his gut turns with pity and leftover ache.

“I wasn’t good to you when I left and I realize that it’s the worst mistake I could’ve made. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for leaving you when you needed someone most and for fucking up everything we had because I didn’t trust you over some bullshit you had no control over. You’re everything. To me. And I fucked up when I left you. I love you more than anything this world’s got to give me but I have to do better because nothing without you makes sense and I don’t know how I’m supposed to pretend we never met. I don’t know what to do without you and I don’t want to lose you. But I fucked up and I’m so fucking sorry,” Steve’s searching the floor now for answers and all Bucky does is take his hands, pulls him inside and closes the door behind them. He braces Steve’s face between his hands. Steve presses them to his face, unable to bring his head up until Bucky kisses him softly and strokes his thumbs across his cheeks. Steve’s shaking and Bucky holds him tighter. He feels Steve’s hands running through his hair and eyes looking at him like he’s not real.

“I love you,” Bucky murmurs, and Steve presses their foreheads together, eyes closed, before kissing him again, pushing Bucky up against a wall to maintain a steady, assured hold. Steve smiles, however small, and Bucky holds onto the faint rays of sunshine it gives like lifeblood.

They end up in bed again, naked, sharing a cigarette with rumpled sheets in abundance. Steve’s kissing a line down Bucky’s neck and shoulder. He returns up to kiss Bucky’s temple before readjusting their bodies to be flush against one another. Bucky taps the cigarette out and turns to his side. Steve looks at him like he hung the moon and stars and Bucky blushes, his first time in ages, and Steve chuckles. They quiet down.

“I’ve been digging up what I can against Pierce,” Steve murmurs, and Bucky looks up in a flash. “What do you mean?”

“I’m looking for ways to undermine him. Find out what I can about what he’s done so he can go to jail where he belongs,”

Bucky rolls over onto one forearm, looking down at Steve and brushing his hair from his eyes. “You—Steve, I don’t know if that’s a good idea,”

“Why?”

“He’s dangerous. Please, don’t,”

“The only reason no one’s stood up to him was because they were afraid of him. He hurt you and I’m not gonna let that go until he’s where he belongs,”

Bucky purses his lips and looks down, only for Steve to rise up and kiss his lips. “I love you. And I want to do this right by you,”

Bucky nods. Looks up, and holds Steve’s face between his hands. “I need you to promise me something,”

“Anything,”

“Be careful. I don’t care if you’re on the brink of some discovery. I need you to be careful,”

“I promise. I promise.”

Bucky nods and lies back, awkward and uneasy in his motions until Steve touches his cheek and strokes it. The touch guides him back next to Steve, cheek pressed against shoulder, familiar warmth spreading through his body and heart and for once, for once, he feels invincible. He closes his eyes and feels Steve’s hand in his hair and at the tip of his spine; he feels deft fingers over his forearms, where old injection marks lay like dark, uncomfortable spots that lie too obviously against his veins. He opens his eyes and watches Steve’s fingers rub over them, like he couldn’t believe he’d missed them so many times before. He feels Steve readjust his cheek against his forehead and they fall asleep in due time.

When Bucky wakes up Steve’s still asleep, lips parted, breath flowing in and out and chest rising and falling in a gentle pulse. Bucky perches his head on his palm after bracing his elbow into the mattress. His free hand strokes over Steve’s cheek and outlines each angle and curve there is to find beneath his fingertips and figures out how to end his book. He presses a thumb to the corner of Steve’s mouth and smiles when the lips move to kiss his thumb. Steve’s eyes open slowly, and Bucky finds himself kissing Steve good morning. Steve prods him down and kisses him proper; Bucky can feel the smile on his lips and the tickle to his sides that comes after.

Bucky braces his hands against Steve’s cheeks, head thrown back in laughter, begging him to stop but quieted with a kiss instead. “I love you,” Steve says, and Bucky stares in awe, not disbelieving him for a second after. “I love you, Stevie, I love you.” And he’s laughing when Steve tickles him and kisses down his neck and makes him feel like something holy.

They decide on breakfast at a café outside. They’re pressed comfortably in a booth, shoulder to shoulder, shared clothes on their backs and hands intertwined underneath the table. Steve’s cheek is pressed against his fist as he stares at Bucky, smile crooked and eyes warm and it makes Bucky smile and blush where he sits. “You look ridiculous,”

“It’s because I love you,”

Bucky hides a smile with a subtle turn of his head and shakes it. “You’re a fuckin’ sap, you know that?”

“Not my fault you made me this way,”

“Oh, so it’s my fault?”

“Pretty much,”

Their coffee’s placed on the table, roses drawn in the foam of both mugs and their waitress winks at them. Bucky blushes further and Steve smirks before he takes a sip of coffee and straightens up, brushing stray hairs from Bucky’s face. “We need to go grocery shopping,”

“We can go after. What do we need?”

“Coffee, eggs, fruit… I think some vegetables, too. And your protein shit,”

Bucky snickers. “Come talk to me about my protein shit once you get into a ring with me,”

“You still owe me a boxing lesson, so I’ll take you up on that offer,”

“Fine. You wanna stop by the gym later?”

“Sure. I’m ready, _Soldier_ ,”

“Oh my god, what is wrong with you,” but he’s laughing as he says it and Steve just winks, cheekily, and Bucky decides to kiss him and for no good reason other than he wants to. Steve presses a thumb in the cleft of Bucky’s chin when he does. They nose, keeping touch wavering and gentle.

Once breakfast comes they eat. “Stevie,”

“Yeah, babe?”

“You know, I was wonderin’—since half your stuff’s at my place—if you wanted to move in with me.”

Steve wipes his mouth with a napkin, looks over, a particular gleam in his eyes Bucky can’t pinpoint and it makes him smile.

“Okay.” Steve declares. Bucky stares, unable to piece the simplicity together, but laughs when Steve kisses his the tip of nose. “When do you want me to?”

“Maybe after the match with Brock,”

Steve takes Bucky’s hands, concern drawn over his face so quickly Bucky feels responsible. “You feel ready for it?”

“No,” Bucky chortles, short. “I’m fuckin’ terrified,”

“He can’t hurt you—I mean, in any way outside the ring,”

“I know, but he’s probably just as jacked up as I was for champions because Pierce will try anythin’ to gain the upper hand. It’s why I’m so worried about you,”

“Don’t worry about me,”

“You can’t ask me to do somethin’ impossible,”

Steve strokes Bucky’s cheeks with both hands, tucks hair behind Bucky’s ears and kisses him. Bucky wraps his hands around Steve’s wrists and moves back solemn, still searching for some kind of answer on Steve’s face. “I’ll be okay,” Steve runs his thumbs up and down Bucky’s cheeks. “I promised, and I’m not going to go back on that anytime soon or ever at all. I love you, and I’m not gonna do anything that’ll jeopardize being with you.”

Bucky rolls his eyes then but can’t help the smile on his face. “Like I said—you’re a goddamn sap,”

“You don’t seem to have a problem with it,”

Bucky frowns and prods a cube of potato into Steve’s mouth after taking a bite out of it himself.

“Thanks, baby.”

“Stop it.” Bucky warns, but there’s a grin on his face Steve smiles at.

They leave for the grocery store, hand in hand, bundled up and braced against the cold, blinking through the dense snow that falls like ash. At some point Bucky’s got Steve’s scarf around his neck and Steve’s lips to his cheek and his jacket is freezing compared to the kiss. He huddles next to Steve, warm, unappreciative of the warm blast of air they get from the vent inside the grocery store. Steve fetches a basket and Bucky grabs his free hand. They start walking down the aisles and fresh produce stands, muttering between each other over what they need and what they don’t; Bucky knows Steve just about hates asparagus but picks up a bundle anyways, throwing it into the cart and grinning at Steve’s look of disdain. “They’re good for you,” he explains and Steve frowns. “Yeah, right,”

“It’s got all these vitamins and minerals that you’re supposed to get on a daily basis. ‘S like a superfood,”

“I don’t know how you could eat it,”

“You just bake some with olive oil and sprinkle some salt and pepper on ‘em—’s all you need,”

“Don’t know, Buck,”

“Either way, babe, you’re gonna have to deal with it. ‘S what we’re havin’ for dinner,”

“Just the asparagus,”

“You know it.” Bucky throws back the sarcasm just as easily as it had come his way and Steve grins. He throws in brussel sprouts. “I can’t cook with those,” Bucky points but Steve’s already walking away. “I think it’s a fair trade, baby,”

“God, you’re awful.”

At the register they stand impossibly close; Bucky’s nose is pressed to Steve’s cheek and his eyes are half-closed; he breathes in stale cologne and faint sweat, all intermingled to make something unique out of Steve’s gentle aroma. Bucky noses and sighs, head turning to lean against Steve’s as the line comes to a standstill.

“The fuck are they doing here?” He doesn’t hear where the voice comes from, only that when it does it’s grating and cruel and too harsh against his ears. He feels Steve’s grip on his waist tighten. Bucky turns inwards and keeps his eyes trained on the dip of Steve’s neck. “Don’t.”

Steve doesn’t respond and Bucky wishes this fucking line would go faster.

“The fuck are the faggots doing in here? Who the hell do they think they are?” The voice is louder now and Bucky shifts and turns further inward, eyes slipping shut and throat trying to push down the glass crystals there. Steve’s warmer now, and Bucky feels muscle beneath his hands harden and stiffen; he hears a heartbeat start to pick up. Again, he warns. “Don’t, baby, don’t. We’ll leave soon,”

“I can’t let him talk to us like this,”

“I don’t care. It doesn’t matter—we’re gonna be out in seconds,”

“Bucky—”

“Please, Stevie. Just leave him alone.” Bucky opens his eyes then and strokes Steve’s cheek with his thumb and waits. The line edges forward, and Bucky’s finding it harder and harder to hide the fact that he knows that voice. He can’t face it. And not with Steve. He whimpers, hides his face further in and tries to keep himself from shaking. Steve stiffens and Bucky presses a hand into Steve’s stomach to keep him from moving forward anymore than what they already have. He can see the other customers with their heads down and fidgety hands struggling to keep their things in place and doesn’t blame the dread that crawls up their chests and throats.

Steve’s bristling, Bucky can tell, and draws a thumb over a terse jaw before kissing there. He hears muttering that travels through the air like electrical impulses and hides away as far as he can get with Steve’s hand pressed to his lower back. He looks over and sees Brock grin so wickedly it nearly sends Bucky into a panicked overdrive. He hates that smile and starts looking for a way out, food and dignity be damned.

“Betcha didn’t know your boy toy was a drug addict—”

Steve’s gone in seconds and Bucky doesn’t notice until they’re both missing and he’s left alone in line with an old woman holding his elbow and asking if he’s alright. He doesn’t hear her; there’s a high pitched drone playing between his ears and the quickening of his heartbeat in his mouth and tunnel vision and someone trying to hold him up because he’s collapsing against the register and breathing, breathing so hard he feels like puking. His heart’s breaking ribs and there are fingers pressed to his neck and a muffled voice trying to tell him to focus on the light above him but he can’t and _Jesus fucking Christ leave me alone where’s Steve where’s Steve I can’t let Brock get to him what if he’s hurt Steve Steve Steve_ —

Someone familiar cups his jaw and tells him to breathe. He closes his eyes and focuses, coughing and sputtering between, until his breathing doesn’t scare him anymore and time slows. Down.

_Easy, baby, easy. I’m here, it’s okay._

_Has he been like this before?_

_Not that I’ve seen._

_That man was awful to you boys. Are you alright, sweetheart?_

_Yes, thank you—_

_Oh dear, your eye—_

“I want to go home.”

“Okay.”

He rises to legs that don’t function and eyes that stay trained on the floor until he’s met with a blast of cold air that makes his eyes water and his cheeks freeze. He thought it took longer for salt water to freeze.

Going home doesn’t register until Steve’s holding him in the safe enclosure of their bedroom on the bed. He notices Steve’s split lip and bruised eye, reaching out with a shaky hand to touch them as he stares. Steve winces at the cut and Bucky springs out of bed; Steve’s too slow to catch him. He grabs rubbing alcohol and cotton pads, and a pack of frozen vegetables from the refrigerator before sitting back down in bed, frustration pulling at his lips and tears on the verge of spilling over. Steve takes his hand with the doused cotton ball, to which Bucky snaps his hand back with a very shaky, “no.” He cups the back of Steve’s head, swiping the cotton over the cut and stopping with every wince Steve gives before picking back up again. Steve only presses the pack of frozen vegetables to the blossoming bruise under his eye and stays silent during the ordeal.

“What the hell were you thinkin’, Steve?” Bucky’s hands are balled in his hands, the bloody cotton in his palm.

“I couldn’t let him talk to us like that,”

“I don’t care. He got a rise out of you and hurt you. You played right to him—fuckin’ hell, Steve, what if he put you in a hospital?”

“He wouldn’t’ve,”

“How the hell do you know?”

“Bucky, c’mon—”

“Stevie, you don’t get it—”

“No, I don’t. And I won’t, not until you start telling me what the hell’s going on.” Steve’s up by now and leaning forward, pack of thawing vegetables in his hand now between them. Bucky purses his lips, shifts until his hands are under his thighs and his hair’s shy of reaching his nose. He notices Steve pause, and swipe a hand over his face to brush away brown locks of hair and to kiss his cheek. Bucky glances back up, cheek squished in Steve’s palm and mouth drying over and over again. He shakes his head and stops short of breath. Steve keeps looking at him, keeps a hand on his face, and kisses spaces of skin the uncut side of his lips can reach.

“He’s the one who’d hold me down and shoot me up with drugs before a fight.” Bucky rasps, and he watches the realization dawn across Steve’s face. “He loved what shit Pierce did, and Pierce took him up after he got rid of me. He’s killed people in the ring before and when you went after him I was so afraid he was going to do somethin’ to you.”

A swelling under Steve’s eye has developed, even with the ice pressed to it. Bucky reaches out and touches the skin beneath it, lets it sink in before Steve cards a hand through his hair and strokes his cheek. “I’m sorry.”

Bucky hates how soft Steve’s voice is, hates how easily he forgives him and lets his body sink against Steve’s, midday sunlight blinding as it filters in from the windows. He hides, angry and confused, still shaking in soft aftermath. He still hears Steve apologizing, promising he won’t do it again, promising he won’t put his life on the line like that again. Bucky feels nothing but warm hands and kisses all along his skin. He clings.

“We should go to Canada.”

Bucky glances up, curious, a furrow in his brow before he reminds Steve to press the vegetables up against his eye. “Just like that?”

“Just like that. I have a friend up there who can hook us up,”

“Where?”

“Montréal,”

“ _Parlez-vous français_?”

“ _Oui_. I studied French in college and spent a semester in Paris.”

Bucky bites his lip and straightens his back, running a hand across the small of Steve’s back. Steve smirks. “You gonna tell me you gotta thing for French?”

Bucky grins. “I might. Especially when you speak it,”

“Then I think you’ll have a lot of fun when we’re up there, _mon chèri_.”

Bucky blushes and Steve laughs right through his nose, pushing at his shoulder and Bucky lets him as he devolves into a laughter hidden behind his face.

“I didn’t think you were being serious about the French,”

“Stop,” Bucky mutters from behind his hands. Steve snorts and pulls him closer.

Steve kisses his cheek too hard and winces when his cut opens. Bucky sucks on his teeth, retrieves alcohol and the bag of cotton balls again. “Steve, you had one job,”

“ _Je suis désolé_.” Steve smirks and Bucky presses a dampened cotton ball to the cut lip to shut him up, but it doesn’t and they keep laughing and Bucky finds another reason to be in love. When he’s done, he stores everything away and slips some Vaseline onto the cut to keep it from opening again. “Do you really want to go to Montréal?” He asks, and Steve nods, stops himself from smiling on both sides of his mouth. “Yeah, ‘course I do. We could drive up there,”

“In your car?”

“Yes, in my fucking Beetle. There’s gonna be plenty of room for us,”

Bucky smirks. “When?”

“Whenever you can.”

Bucky pulls his phone out; he discovers he doesn’t have a fight to be in for at least another month or so and remembers it’s the training and prep time for champions in March. Steve strokes Bucky’s free hand, having already memorized which knuckles are flatter than others and which are roughest to the touch. Bucky looks up and pockets his phone. “Now,”

“Right now?”

“Right now. I’ve got the rest of the month to be with you,”

“What about the fight?”

“I think I can take some time off for you. I need some time away. So do you.” He kisses Steve where he knows it won’t hurt and looks at him, eyes wide and hair, for once, out of his face. He thumbs the sides of Steve’s cheeks.

“You have a passport on you?”

“Yeah, yeah. I just need to get packed and let Wanda know I’ll be out of town for awhile,”

“How long?”

“As long as you want,”

“A week,”

“Two?”

“One and a half. Where can we stay?”

“There’s this beautiful hotel in the middle of the city; _Hotel Omni Mont-Royal_ ,”

“Bet it’s not as beautiful as the way you say it. How much does it cost a night?”

Steve smiles and pulls out his phone, pulling Bucky in close to his side and Bucky rubs his cheek against Steve’s shoulder. He assumes they look awfully ridiculous, beat up and cold but entangled in ways Bucky never thought he’d be happy in.

Steve frowns. “It’s a two hundred a night,”

“But you got a friend,”

“She can try to bring it down to a hundred. But that’s still gonna be too much,”

Bucky kisses Steve’s hands. “I don’t want us to have to worry about money on this trip. It’s just gonna be me and you,”

Steve sighs, nods, squeezes Bucky’s hands.

“But we can stay for a week instead,”

“Alright, Buck. I’ll go pack and meet you back here in an hour, okay?”

Bucky kisses him, softly, gently, between his strong hands before they run through blond hair. “Yeah. I’ll be ready by then.”

He’s packing when Steve leaves, calling Natasha after Wanda in between rounds from his dresser and suitcase to ask her to take care of Zemo while he’s away. She snorts over the phone, calls the trip an impromptu honeymoon, but softly tells him he’s doing good and that he and Steve need the time away. She tells him she loves him, and hangs up. Bucky misses her already.

He makes sure Zemo’s food and water bowls are full, litterbox clean, stove and gas and lights off. Steve texts, says he’s waiting, and Bucky just about falls down all the stairs to meet Steve in his car. Passport and wallet in his jacket pocket, he throws his suitcase in the trunk and sits up front, book-in-process on his lap; he’s so happy there’s something prickling in the corners of his eyes and Steve notices it enough to kiss him. “I love you,” Bucky reminds, and Steve kisses him again. “Let’s go, babe,”

“Did you book the room yet?”

Bucky winces, Steve sighs and mutters something Bucky can’t quite catch, and his playlist starts as Bucky books the room on his phone and gets comfortable in the warmth of Steve’s car. The Beetle rattles forward.

“So I see you like the car,”

Bucky snorts. “I didn’t say anythin’,”

“That’s why you’re leaning back and got your feet on the dashboard, huh,”

Bucky rolls his eyes and sets his red pen and papers away; he reaches for Steve’s hand, kisses it, watching the taxi and skyscrapers jerk past them. It’s beautiful, the sunlight slanted against Steve’s freckles and hair, the music playing gently through the car.

“I’ll take over in three hours, baby,” he murmurs, and Steve hums as he switches lanes to get on the Jersey Turnpike. Bucky chuckles, and they don’t stop talking until they reach a gas station several miles shy of the Vermont border. Bucky can see exhaustion, however slight, lining Steve’s eyes and reminds him he’ll take over. They get gas, junk food, and leave with Steve knocked out in the passenger seat, curled up and slight.

Bucky drives back to the gas station and buys a fleece blanket. Steve snuggles into it almost immediately; Bucky cards his fingers through blond hair as he drives and follows the navigation system on Steve’s phone.

It starts to snow. The Appalachians are already covered in it, pitch black ridges and slopes and terrace-like edges outlined in the stark cold of white snow. Fir and spruce trees lay like a skirt around the mountains outcrops; traffic’s slow, and Bucky assumes it’s to take pictures. He pulls over at one point and takes a picture, after having fished out the camera from Steve’s backpack in the backseat. Bucky aims, focuses, and snaps a picture with Steve’s sleeping body shadowed against the white, mountainous foreground. He puts the camera back and gets on the road. He stops a few more times along the way, taking photos of the landscape and of Steve, when the opportunity presents itself.

They’re in line for customs when Bucky has to shift Steve awake. Steve squints against the rise of the birthing moonlight, yawns, stretches his limbs in the small space the car allows. Bucky smiles at him the whole while and strokes his cheek. “You sleep well, baby?” He asks, and Steve gives a lethargic smile before crawling over for a kiss. “‘Course I did. Had a dream,

“Oh yeah? What about?”

“We were walkin’ by the Saint Lawrence and you kissed me in front of this jazz band playin’ out in the cold,” he mumbles and Bucky chortles, gently giving Steve the kiss he wants before guiding him back to his seat. “You keep up that dreamin’ and I might just act on it.”

Steve hums and sits up, fixing his seat, leaning over to kiss Bucky’s neck softly before nosing his collarbone. Bucky chuckles and kisses back when he can. “Get your passport out; we’re about to pull up,”

“You remember where I put it?”

“Your backpack, I think.”

Steve grunts as he heaves his backpack onto his lap and begins to rummage through it. He pulls out his camera and turns it on. “Did you take any pictures of me, babe?” He teases, and Bucky only rolls his eyes as Steve starts to look through the collection. Bucky notices when he stops on the one of the mountains and of Steve sleeping in the forefront. Steve smiles, his thumb rubbing at the screen corner. “I love this one,” he murmurs.

“Me too.” Bucky’s grateful for that one semester of photography he took in college because it’s giving Steve this beautiful, tranquil softness about his face and Bucky doesn’t think he’s seen that face before. He loves it.

Steve hands him his passport when Bucky pulls his window down for the customs officer. Bucky hands over their passports, old and new.

“Reason for travel?” The officer asks.

“Vacation,”

“How long and where will you be staying?”

“Week and a half in Montréal.”

The officer scans their passports, stamps an empty page, and hands back the worn booklets. “Welcome to Canada. Enjoy your stay.”

“Thanks.”

Bucky thinks he’s gotten frostbite all over his lips and nose by the time he pulls his window up and hands Steve back his passport.

He feels like he should’ve known the phone reception would’ve gone out when crossing into another country. The signs are in French.

“Can you take over?”

“ _Oui_ , _mon chèri_ ,”

“We’re not even two minutes out and you’re already startin’ with that,”

“You know it’s all for you,”

“Shut up.”

Steve looks over and smirks, and Bucky pulls over for them to switch seats. Bucky curls underneath the warm blanket once he’s back in and snuggles the edge against his nose where Steve’d lay. The swelling around his eye has gone down with sleep, but the cut’s taking time. Bucky reaches over and strokes the hair on the back of Steve’s head; he leans over and kisses Steve’s shoulder and angles himself until he’s tucked underneath his arm, half-asleep and half-awake, clinging to warmth like he’s never felt it before. His eyelids grow heavy and he slumps when he falls asleep.

Steve wakes him up outside their hotel in what seems like seconds later. Bucky yawns and curls outward before he’s closer to tired than exhausted. The snow’s billowing down onto the guarded faces of passerby and tucking underneath the soles of their feet with every step away. City lights murmur halos against the white.

Bucky doesn’t notice the valet until he’s carrying his suitcase through the elevator and Steve’s putting his keys away and holding his hand. Bucky turns, kissing Steve’s cheek with one arm braced across his waist to pull him in closer. They’ve just passed the tenth floor. “What’re we gonna do first?” Bucky asks, lazily curling a finger around one of the free bands of Steve’s hoodie. Steve slides a hand up Bucky’s back, rubs there.

“Sleep?”

“Wow. You’re getting old,”

“We drove eight hours—”

“Seven and a half,”

“—to get here. But I think you’ll change your mind once we see the place,”

“Doubt it,”

“ _On va voir_.”

Bucky nuzzles Steve’s neck and tries to make sure he’s got a steady grip on his suitcase. They get off at the nineteenth floor, hand in hand, twisting down a hallway to their room: 1934. Steve unlocks it, pockets the keycard and flips the light on to leave Bucky so devoid of air he has to remind himself to keep breathing. The place looks better than most high rise lofts in Manhattan.

There’s a gas fireplace, embedded into the wall and surrounded by ledges on ledges of grey rocks. There’s a velvet couch and two loveseats facing the fire, a Persian rug thrown in the open space between. Polished oak stretches beneath their feet, towards the furnished open kitchen, amass with windows, which oversee the entirety of Old Montréal. Bucky knows Steve’s living off his face of awe, and he feels Steve come up behind him to kiss down his neck and squeeze his hips. “I think you were right,”

“About?”

“Stayin’.”

Bucky notices a short staircase that leads to the bedroom, and tugs his suitcase and Steve along up the five stairs to a wide open bedroom. The windows are short, but letting in streams of light and city sounds, decorated with curled irons on the outside. There’s a sister balcony, providing the pale, white view of the St. Lawrence as it rushes by step by step. The king sized bed’s pressed up against the back middle of the room, flanked by nightstands, all on top of plush carpet. There’s a wardrobe instead of a dresser, and Bucky opens it to find a post-it note on the inside of the left door. It’s in French, and Bucky hands it over to Steve like he has more of an idea of what it says. Steve takes a glance, grins.

“What’s it say?”

“Have fun. It’s from Peggy,”

“The friend?”

“The friend.”

“Think we’ll see her around?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I just wanna say thank you for hookin’ us up, if we see her.”

Steve chuckles and puts the post-it on the top drawer of the wardrobe, catching his own face in the mirror; Bucky’s in the foreground, watching with a bitten lip as Steve pokes at the dying swelling around his eye to unravel the bruise blooming there. He moves to his cut lip, to when Bucky slinks his arms around Steve’s body, caressing the skin through his coat and sweater, burying his face against the crook of Steve’s shoulder and neck.

“He did some number on me, didn’t he,” Steve murmurs, only to the open air, because Bucky’s too preoccupied with making sure his love flows out of every plane of his skin to hear what Steve has to say.

“I had him on the ropes, Buck,”

“Sure you did.”

He almost feels Steve wilt in his arms, and raises his head for Steve to turn around and cup his cheeks, thumbs running over freshly shaven skin before crossing his forearms behind Bucky’s head. Bucky sighs, presses their foreheads together, and focuses on the dip in Steve’s throat when Steve moves his thumbs again. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too. For not tellin’ you enough,”

“About what?”

“About me and what happened,”

“You know you don’t have to rush into it. I’m not going anywhere,”

“Don’t say that,”

“I’m moving in with you, babe, it’s not like there’s any other place I _can_ go.”

Bucky looks up and Steve’s giving him that look, where his eyebrows draw up at the edges and a sad, sad smile comes over his lips and all Bucky can do at this point is gawk before he kisses. His hands press down into Steve’s hips, and his lips are wary of the scab on Steve’s. He feels Steve laugh, tug a hand through brown hair and pull, making Bucky weak in the knees and pliant to when Steve tugs him over to the bed.

They forget to unpack, and Bucky cuddles against Steve’s bare chest after they’ve pulled the window open a crack to let out cigarette smoke. There’s no moon tonight. Only clouds, and a muted orange light that makes them visible enough over the city. Bucky shivers and Steve gets up. “Where you goin’?”

“Gimme a sec.”

Bucky frowns and buries himself further beneath the warmth of the blankets and pillows. Steve comes back with two glasses and an already open bottle of Scottish malt whiskey. Bucky raises a brow and takes a free glass; Steve pours them both a shot’s worth. They clink glasses and down the liquid amber sunlight. A warmth manifests through all of Bucky’s chest, and he lies back on the headboard and stares at Steve, all lopsided smirk and lidded eyes. He kisses him, eyes closed, and sighs when Steve pours him another glass, forehead lazily pressed to Steve’s cheek. He sighs and they take another drink.

“ _À votre santé_ ,”

“That mean cheers?”

“Mhm,”

“You know, there is one thing I do know how to say in French,”

“Oh yeah? And what’s that?”

Bucky quirks a brow and chuckles, almost giddy with how he’s about to say it.

“C’mon, what is it?” Steve grins, and Bucky draws himself in closer.

“ _Je t’aime_ ,”

“ _Je t’aime plus que tu ne le penses,_ ”

Bucky rolls his eyes and chortles. “What’s that supposed to mean?” And Steve shrugs, says, “you know, I don’t remember,”

“You don’t remem—I call bullshit,”

“Alright, Buck,”

“I’ll find out,”

“Sure, Buck,”

“You know I will.”

“Whatever you say, babe.” Steve pours them one more glass and nurses his as Bucky leans with his cheek pressed up against Steve’s shoulder.

The next week goes by in bliss. Bucky barely remembers any of it; there’s a vague recollections of people, of places, of Steve guiding them around in French and kissing him by the harbor. Of eating crepes on their balcony with Steve’s sketchbook and charcoal nearby. Of telling each other things that needed to be said. Of history and love and laughter and pain, and of Steve’s fingers marking patterns over Bucky’s shoulder blades.

He remembers meeting Peggy, finally, intimidated by her gait and wit and impressed all the same. She has a clever gaze, a sharp tongue and wildly intelligent and Bucky loves her already and sees why Steve would too. Steve later tells him they were together, briefly, during his second tour out. But she was called back to Britain on some MI6 business, and he remained in Afghanistan. Bucky appreciates the honesty and kisses Steve in return.

He repeats the French Steve’d told him on their first night in town when he asks Peggy what it means; she smiles and shakes her head. “He loves you more than you know.” She takes a sip of tea and they look over to where Steve’s in line for the café; he’s looking at them too, a hesitant smile on his face, one to which Bucky and Peggy both roll their eyes to.

“And he means it.” She continues. Bucky trusts her immediately and fiddles with the mug of coffee between his palms. He looks back up, drawn back to the conversation when Peggy lays one on his cheek and tells him to rest assured. Steve comes back with pastries and Bucky catches the look he and Peggy share, realizes there’s still something there he respects and stays out of. Peggy feeds into that sadness on Steve’s chest, the one from long ago, and he takes Steve’s hand underneath the table.

The next day they visit the _Basilique Notre-Dame_ and Bucky’s starting to see a pattern with where he and Steve go. Steve draws the stained glass Rose window in his sketchbook, under a fuzzy sketch of Bucky laughing in bed with the sheets molding against the skin around his waist. Bucky touches it, because he’s never seen it before and it leaves him more breathless than a punch to the solar plexus, and leaves a kiss on Steve’s cheek before his nose follows to press there. Steve keeps pressing, breaking his super sharp pencil tip, using rigid graphite to shadow. He closes it with the sketch incomplete, and Bucky looks up to find Steve’s lips on his. The choir starts to sing. Sunlight filters in through the Rose window. There’s colored gold at their feet and Bucky knows he doesn’t believe in God but rather an angel because he sees an outline of wings on the floor and believes they’re real.

They get home late and fall asleep, but Bucky wakes when Steve has a nightmare and is missing from the side of the bed that faces the city. He pads over to the living room where Steve’s curled in on himself. He kisses Steve after words have been said and no more remain to be said. Steve makes love to him in front of the fireplace, impassioned with ardor and with fingers that slip, not quite able to grip onto something steady. Bucky breathes in staccato time and writhes when Steve smooths a hand over his neck and holds. The carpet leaves them burned across their thighs, forearms, backs and stomachs; Steve throws a blanket over them and they fall asleep tangled in one another.

They celebrate the last night much like the first: bare in bed afterwards, sheets rumpled, whiskey in crystal glasses, window open and shortened cigarette sitting in the ashtray. Bucky’s body, for once, is free of bruises, and he admires the way it looks against Steve’s old scars. Bronze against ragged white. He traces a scar by the shoulder, one he’s burned to memory, and nestles his cheek against Steve’s chest in silence. Steve cards his fingers through Bucky’s hair. “Thank you, for this,” he begins, and Steve runs his fingers over Bucky’s cheeks before kissing down soft skin. “You know I’d do anything for you,” Steve kisses Bucky’s jaw.

“Why?”

“Because I know you’d do the same for me.”

Bucky smiles, sighs. “I’d do more than everything,”

“That right?”

“Yeah. I just—”

Steve shifts until he’s better pressed against Bucky’s side, looking at him with earnest and Bucky can’t stop himself from kissing him. Steve grins and presses their foreheads together, and Bucky watches deft fingers trace over his cheeks and lips. “I love you,” he says, almost like a prayer, and Steve brushes away brown strands of hair that veer too close to Bucky’s lips before he kisses him one more time. Bucky revels in it, hooks a thigh over Steve’s to hoist himself into his lap as his left hand maneuvers the whiskey glass to the night stand. Steve stares up at him, pupils blown until there’s only a faint ring of ice that Bucky can see.

There’s a hand sneaking up the small of his back that pushes him forward. Bucky’s forehead meets Steve but his chin draws back to restrain a kiss. Steve hums, impatient, pliant once Bucky jerks his hips forward against Steve’s, sighing quietly at the friction. Steve tells him he loves him, desperate in seconds, and Bucky doesn’t disbelieve him when he starts kissing down his body like it’s something holy. Bucky tips his head back and soaks in the touch, starved, fingernails digging into the shorter hairs at Steve’s nape and skin just about burning when Steve digs his nails into the small of Bucky’s back.

When Steve’s ready Bucky gets up and spreads his knees wider, sitting down, bracing himself on the headboard with Steve’s hands on his hips giving him time. Bucky jerkily moves his hair away from his face for Steve to kiss, but all Steve does is wrap a hand around him and pulse, emphatically, making Bucky moan and stutter each breath that comes out. Steve presses a thumb to Bucky’s tip and Bucky gasps and whimpers, now moving with greater urgency and sloppy speed. Steve encourages, nipping Bucky’s jaw, spreading him wider, slotting a thumb on lower teeth that Bucky sucks on with messy earnest. He’s shaking and gasping, borderline asthmatic; tears pool at the corners of his eyes when he leans backward and Steve takes some control.

Steve mutters encouragement Bucky hardly hears as he tries to move his hips in time. He comes too quickly, but each touch after as Steve takes his time to catch up leaves him over-sensitive and raw. Steve braces his cheek and claws down his thigh and Bucky arches and turns to look at the city lights outside. Steve stops and Bucky snaps back.

“Eyes on me, baby.”

He does and Bucky watches as Steve finally lets go and presses hard enough to bruise. Bucky sits up and kisses him, mouth half open with his ragged breathing.

They go again and again until Bucky’s so overstimulated he finds it difficult to move. He’s so sensitive even touching Steve makes fireworks set off under his skin. Steve touches deftly, carefully, and Bucky can feel his eyes all over his exposed body. Steve noses his cheeks and runs a gentle hand over Bucky’s hair and Bucky sighs; he finally feels the soreness of the bruises left across his body and neck and as always, Steve kisses them.

They shower and soak in a warm bath moments later, eyes closed and bubbles frothing around their chests. It’s peaceful until Steve gives himself a longer beard and white hair and Bucky laughs and Steve snorts at the way Bucky starts to lose it. “Are you still gonna love me when I start growing white hair and wrinkles?” He asks, and Bucky pushes frothy bubbles away from Steve’s lips to kiss him. “Of course I am,” he promises.

“If I start losing my memory?”

“Mhm,”

“Go bald?”

“Yeah,”

“Need hearing aids?”

“Of course.” Bucky laughs and wipes the rest of the bubbles off to knead at Steve’s real beard beneath. Steve maneuvers them until they’re pressed close enough to draw a line of warmth down the middle of the water. Bucky slips tendrils of blond hair away from Steve’s face and kisses him, chapped lips against smooth and calloused fingertips against rough, shaven skin. Bucky leans forward when Steve runs a hand through brown hair and reminds Bucky he loves him. Bucky grins, reciprocates; and when the smiles die down he presses his lips to Steve’s cheek and leans in, feels Steve’s familiar hands on his waist before they kiss.

 

—

 

“Welcome back, folks! Tonight’s the night we’ve all been waiting for; on one side we’ve got Alexander Pierce’s protégé, the one, the only, the beast of Queens— _Crossbones_!”

Bucky listens as the crowd shrieks, boos, and chants all in one and impatiently bounces on the balls of his toes. He air punches, doesn’t let his hair fall over his face, and takes a deep breath. There’s a hand on the small of his back and a kiss to his cheek. “Kick ass for me.” Steve murmurs, and Bucky does his best to ignore the worry he tastes once he’s stopped bouncing. He looks to Steve, wrapped hand pressed against a rough cheek and thumb making its rounds. “You make us sound like we’re married,”

“I know.” Steve says, and Bucky smiles when they kiss. He sighs, closes his eyes when he hears his own name announced. “I have to go.”

“Whatever happens—I love you.”

Bucky nods. He kisses Steve in haste before he’s forced to let go into the spotlight. He closes his eyes, all motion slowed to the breath in his lungs and his shoes against the floor. Fingertips grapple for his robe, hot concrete on silk, his name etching its plastic material into his spine. The wraps in between his fingers scratch lightly and nestle until warm. His heart’s echoing in his chest, slower than sleep; he’s calmer than he’s ever felt before.

He steps into the ring, slips his hood off, and takes in surgical lights and muddled sound with Brock prancing in front of him, swinging his arms and shouting so that Bucky can’t hear. There’s a small, familial hand on his back and he turns to see Natasha, smiling through solemn eyes and fitting a glove over Bucky’s hand wrapped in black. “What are you—”

“Like I said: there are perks to knowing your coach,” she pulls on the glove laces. “You know I’ll still be with you, no matter what happens.”

Bucky smiles, sigh coming out between his teeth when Natasha reaches for his left hand.

“Yeah. I know. But it’s still good to hear.”

Natasha smiles, and Bucky can’t help notice something teary in the corners of her eyes. Before he can ask there’s a slap on his bare shoulder and an eyepatch that veers a little too close for comfort. “Hey—”

“I gotta say this now or it ain’t gonna come out ever again,” Fury stumbles and Bucky smirks. “Alright, then. Have at it.”

Fury sighs and tucks his hands into his tracksuit. “I’m proud of you, y’know,”

“And?”

Fury shakes his head and slaps a mouthguard into Bucky’s hand. “That’s it. No way in hell am I gonna get sentimental on your ass right now.”

Bucky smirks and fits the mouthguard over his teeth, chucks his knuckles against one another and pulls to the center of the ring. There’s a blind anger before a calm that leaves him near breathless when he’s face to face with Brock. He puts a hand out.

Brock spits at his feet and Bucky retracts.

The ref pulls back and Bucky’s suddenly flat against the rungs. His eyes water and face reverberates with shock until he swings away and slams a hook to Brock’s jaw. He backs up and blocks the slew of jabs and crosses, swings, and shocks until he gets a foot behind Brock’s ankle and ducks to hear a jaw _clack_ with his uppercut. The next jab-crosses come in practiced rounds. There’s a hand on Bucky’s shoulder that shoves him back to the center of the ring.

Brock licks blood off his lip and Bucky pants, baring his neon teeth and the veins in his arms. He tastes sweat in his mouth and blood in the back of his throat, the heat around him pressing into every square inch of skin and lights too bright for his eyes.

Brock attacks and Bucky loses focus. He coughs and Brock swings at the same time, leaving his teeth to cut his tongue open and leave his mouth full of copper and the anger comes back again. Bucky blocks and counters, jabs, crosses and snaps one on the bridge of Brock’s nose.

It’s all they do; snap and swing and growl and yell. Bucky can’t keep track of how many times he’s been sat down between rounds until he’s at the seventh, and Natasha’s pressing ice to his nose. There’s another hand on his arm, one he knows the wrinkles by heart, but can’t open his eyes to look at.

He stands back up and raises his arms.

He blocks the first punch, staggers, adjusts with jabs to fend off Brock like a cobra before a hook and uppercut leave him sprawling. He can’t get up. There’s an exhaustion screaming in every muscle, too heavy, pinning him down like lead and there’s another voice quietly asking him to stay there.

_Stay. C’mon. It hurts less here with me._

Bucky shakes his head, opens his eyes and sees Pierce smiling at him against Brock’s calf. _C’mon. When have I done wrong by you?_

 _No._ Bucky closes his eyes and jerks himself up. He staggers again, arms parallel as he takes in the shocks and pushes away like a mouse.

There’s another uppercut and something in his mouth comes loose. He falls to his knees.

_Don’t fight me, son. I’m the most important thing to you. You’ve done so much for me, and I just need you to do it again. C’mon._

_No._ “No,” he grits, eyes open and mouth wide as he gets up and puts his arms in front of him. “No.”

“The fuck you goin’ on about, motherfucker?” Brock swings and Bucky falls out of step. He’s dancing with Steve in the kitchen, guiding two left feet with his own and he’s smiling. He lets a punch over his shoulder and drives his own towards the solar plexus.

Steve’s laughing now because he’s got it. And Bucky drives the rest of it home. He takes the burn and blood of each hit. He delivers something ten times as worse in return, gaze steely and flashing lights the adornments to the way Brock collapses and Bucky slams a hook to keep him that way. He staggers against the rungs and gasps for breath.

Pierce is screaming in Brock’s ear, the referee slapping the floor to ten. Bucky closes his eyes and forces his knees up. He’s standing when the bell goes off.

He’s standing when the crowd does too, and the lights lose themselves to fury. He’s standing when a hand wraps around his wrist and throws his arm up into the air.

He’s standing when he puts on the champion’s belt and warm bodies help him stay upright. There’s familiar cologne nearby, warmth unlike any other. It wipes his blood away, the sweat, and the sound of chaos. He opens an eye—the other swollen shut—and Steve cradles his cheek.

He’s standing when he’s kissed away from his cut lip but still on his lips, still enough to elicit a wave of sound so loud he’s lost in it.

He’s standing when he realizes he has all he’s ever wanted, and all he’s ever wanted wants him too. “I love you, Buck, I’m so proud of you I love you—”

_You did good today, Barnes._

_You did good._


End file.
